Silent Truth

Farid Mamood, the son of an Iranian refugee family, is burnt to death in an alleyway. It looks like a racial attack, and that's exactly what Burke doubts from the start. He's right to. A death like that brings out the worst assumptions first, and Burke has learned to wait. A liaison officer, DS Mita Rahim, joins the team, and the investigation begins to circle the family itself.

Jackie finds graffiti relating to the Lockerbie bombing, which drags old wounds into the case. Farid's sister Delkash is attacked next. Each new attack narrows the circle around the family instead of widening it. Another brother, Yusi, who is gay, tries to bribe immigration officer Kirkwood into extending the family's stay, and it costs him his life. Every answer the team finds comes with a cost attached to it. Kirkwood comes into the frame, along with Billy Geddes, an Iraqi veteran who married into the family, and local entrepreneur Keenan, a business rival of the senior Mamood. But the racial motive holds after all, and the survivors' real crisis turns out to be the deportation proceedings that threaten to send them back.

Glenn Chandler and David Kane wrote the episode. Davood Ghadami is Duncan Clark, Michael Nardone is William Geddes, Kammy Darweish is Jal-Al Mamood, Lewis Alsamari is Soheil Mamood, Nalini Chetty is Delkash Mamood, Bamshad Abedi-Amin is Yusi Mamood and Anneika Rose is DS Mita Rahim. Blythe Duff, John Michie and Alex Norton front the inquiry.

Immigration stories can tip into issue-of-the-week territory, and this one mostly avoids it by keeping the focus on one family trying to hold its ground. The Lockerbie graffiti is a smart, bitter detail. The episode never lets the politics swamp the people, which is why the ending lands the way it does. The murder gets solved, and the family still loses. That's the part that stays with you.