Bad Medicine

A newly qualified doctor, Scott Clarkson, is found tortured and mutilated in an empty warehouse. The warehouse tells its own story before anyone says a word, and the case's connections to drug trafficking draw two London detectives north: DI Mike Casey, an old friend of Burke's, and DS Moretti. Jackie and Robbie don't warm to them, and the feeling appears to be mutual.

Scott's girlfriend Lucy, a medic herself, gets arrested for manufacturing recreational drugs, and she admits Scott made and sold Ecstasy to pay his student fees. Her confession pulls the inquiry into the student halls and the debts that follow people into the profession. The London officers take her in. Then Lucy kills herself in custody, after a visit from Moretti and Casey, and the question the episode leaves hanging is whether Jackie and Robbie were right to be suspicious of the visitors' motives all along. Casey's old friendship with Burke complicates it further, because Burke can't quite bring himself to distrust an old mate.

Glenn Chandler and David Kane wrote it, Bill Anderson directed. Kevin O'Loughlin is Scott Clarkson, Davood Ghadami is Duncan Clark, Finlay Welsh is Mr Clarkson, Reece Dinsdale is DI Mike Casey, Steve John Shepherd is DS Moretti, James Anthony Pearson is Gordon Watts and Emma Campbell-Jones is Katie Wallis. Blythe Duff, John Michie and Alex Norton front the inquiry.

It's a grim one, even by this show's standards: a young doctor tortured to death, another young medic dead in custody, and a drugs trade that reaches into the people who are supposed to heal. The tension between the local team and the London visitors gives the episode its engine. It's the visiting officers who feel like the real threat, and the show lets that suspicion stand without resolving it. And the ending doesn't let anyone feel good about being right.