Skin Deep

A man bleeds to death on the floor of his health club, and two of the female members step forward to announce, separately, that they were both sleeping with him. So the episode's first question is a personal one, and the second is about what kind of club this is.

Reid and Ross take the lead, and the more they look at the members, the more the place feels like a front for something. The women are devoted to fitness in a way that crosses into obsession, and behind the treadmills and the protein shakes there are secrets with teeth. But the health club isn't the only thing under strain. Ross is dealing with a corruption inquiry that has him in the frame, and Jardine is forced into a confrontation with his own mortality. Two personal storms running alongside a murder inquiry makes for a crowded deck, and the episode juggles it without dropping anything. The dead man's own routine gets pulled apart along with everyone else's.

Glenn Chandler and Nick Doughty wrote it, Michael Brayshaw directed. James MacPherson is Jardine, Blythe Duff is Reid, John Michie is Ross and Colin McCredie is Fraser, with Robert Robertson's Dr Stephen Andrews, Brian Cowan's DCS Brian Holmes and Yasmin Marley's WPC Heather McIntyre in support. Briony McRoberts plays Glena Bennett, Lucy Akhurst is Nikki Jones and Ronnie Letham plays Bernie Bevan.

The polished front of modern life takes a beating here. The episode's point, made without labouring it, is that the shinier the surface, the more worth checking what sits underneath. Health and death make uneasy bedfellows, and this one keeps them in the same room for a full hour without ever letting the metaphor get the better of the murder. It's also one of the more serious outings for Ross, who spends most of it defending his own name.