Fact and Fiction

Three years ago Jimmy Melville's body was found floating in a river, and the case went cold. Now crime writer Mark Joffe has published a novel called Chaos that describes a murder identical to Melville's, detail for detail. The description is so close that coincidence stops being a comfortable explanation. It's the kind of coincidence that only happens in novels, which is precisely why the detectives distrust it. Joffe is a part-time English lecturer, and at one point Melville's phone, later sold on e-bay, had been in his possession. Burke wants him, and the wanting shows.

Joffe is an arrogant, evasive interviewee, the kind who enjoys watching the police work. But Burke gets openings. Joffe once had an affair with Anne Scoular and was violent and threatening towards her after she left him for Melville. And an older female colleague, spurned by Joffe in the past, is willing to cooperate. The pieces start to fit a version of events that fiction couldn't save him from.

Glenn Chandler and Ian Madden wrote it, Madden also directing. Finlay Robertson plays Joffe with the right amount of smirk, Kim Thomson is Phyllis Wade, Jimmy Yuill is DCI Wilson, Rob Drummond is the shop owner, Mairi Morrison is Jane Melville and Susan Coyle is Anne Scoular. Blythe Duff, John Michie, Alex Norton and Colin McCredie anchor the investigation.

The show has always liked the idea that the best lies are the ones written down, and here a man's own book does the work the police couldn't. Watching Burke wear Joffe down is the fun of it. The writer thinks he's telling a story; the detective is reading it as a confession. The episode even gets a quiet joke out of it: the crime writer's imagination is the best witness the police will ever have. It's a fair reversal, and the episode earns it.