The Thirteenth Step

An ex-convict named Eddie Monroe is found stabbed in a Govan alleyway, and even the dead man's enemies are not sorry to see him gone. Chief among them is Angus Ford, the retired officer who put Monroe away years ago and who still insists, plainly and without apology, that the man deserved what he got. That is a hard position for Burke to stand next to, because Ford is not a villain. He is a decent man who thinks justice has been done twice. His certainty is the most uncomfortable thing in the episode, because it is honest.

But if Ford did not do it, somebody did. The roads keep leading back to Daniel Tulloch, an old acquaintance of Monroe's, and to Tulloch's family. The deeper Burke digs, the more the case starts to look like it is settling scores that predate the murder itself. And the digging costs him something: the investigation drags him back into his own past, and the demons there are not tidy.

Glenn Chandler and Robert Fraser wrote it, Justin Molotnikov directed. Alex Norton's Burke is the engine, with Blythe Duff's DS Jackie Reid, John Michie's DI Robbie Ross and Colin McCredie's DC Stuart Fraser around him. Andrew Neil is the unbending Angus Ford, Kenneth Bryans is Daniel Tulloch, Julie Miller is Grace Tulloch, Jonathan Holt is Liam Tulloch, Robert Willox is Iain Gallen and James Sutherland plays Eddie Monroe himself.

This is Taggart at its grittiest, down an alley in Govan with no soft light anywhere. The mystery is fair, but the real story is a retired copper's certainty that some men are beyond saving, and the weight of a case that will not stay in the past. Burke does not come out of it untouched. Neither does the viewer's patience for easy answers.