The Ties That Bind

A librarian's body is found behind the wheel of his own car in the Clyde, and at first glance it looks like a hit and run. But the man was tied up and already dead before the car went into the water. Someone went to considerable trouble to make a drowning look like an accident, and then didn't quite manage it.

For DCI Matt Burke, the case arrives with extra weight. His professional reputation is left hanging in the balance as the enquiry goes on, and the episode keeps that pressure ticking underneath the police work. It's a rare outing where the detective's own career is on the line while the mystery unfolds, and Alex Norton gets to play the strain without losing the gruffness. The pressure comes from above as well as from the case itself; ACC Torrance's presence keeps the stakes visible from the first scene.

Glenn Chandler and Stuart Hepburn wrote it, Patrick Harkins directed, and it reached screens on 20 January 2005. Blythe Duff's Jackie Reid, John Michie's Robbie Ross and Colin McCredie's Stuart Fraser support Alex Norton's Burke, with Lesley Harcourt's Gemma Kerr in the office. Graeme Rooney is James Grant, Andy Dow plays Liam Forrester, Tam Dean Burn appears as Eddie Hodge, David Robb as John Ferguson and David Rintoul as ACC Torrance, breathing down Burke's neck from above.

The river does half the storytelling here. A car in the Clyde is a Glasgow image that carries its own menace, and the show knows it. There's something properly chilling about a man tied up in his own car and sent into the water to look like an accident; the episode trusts that image and builds around it. The case stays strange in the right way, and the closing scenes leave the impression that Burke has been closer to the edge than he let on.