Pinnacle

The body of Tina Brogan, the woman who ran the Pinnacle finance group, turns up with wads of bank notes stuffed in her mouth. It is the kind of detail that tells you everything about how she was seen and nothing about who killed her. The wads are a statement: the killer wanted her seen, not just found. The obvious suspect is her estranged husband Terry, an alcoholic who is also dying of cancer, and the evidence against him is not thin. Jackie Reid, recently widowed herself, cannot bring herself to believe it.

This is where the episode gets interesting. Jackie's sympathy for Terry is personal, and she knows it. She sets out to prove his innocence against the weight of the evidence, and the case starts to bend around her certainty. The complications keep coming: Tina was carrying another man's child, the Fraud Squad had her under surveillance, and Pinnacle was a scam all along, built to take cash from trusting investors and vanish to Australia. Plenty of people had reason to want her dead, and some of them had money in the deal.

Glenn Chandler, Tony Philpott and Paul Logue wrote it, Mike Alexander directed. Blythe Duff's Reid is the heart of the piece, with John Michie's DI Robbie Ross, Alex Norton's DCI Matt Burke and Colin McCredie's DC Stuart Fraser around her. Billy Mack is the pitiable Terry Brogan, Gilbert Martin is Frank Harris, Amanda Beveridge and Greg Powrie are Hilary and Paul Marsh, Gordon Brandie is Smike and Imogen Walker is Carole Kent.

A pyramid scheme is a fine subject for a murder show, because everyone in it is a victim and everyone in it is a suspect. The best thing here is Jackie, letting her heart lead her into the wrong room and then having to talk her way out. And the ending leaves the easy certainties behind. That feels right for a case with this much money in it.