Melody

Melody is a local prostitute, and her murder leaves a silence behind it. The murder itself stays off screen; the aftermath is what the episode wants to look at, and it's worse. Maggie finds that silence the moment she starts asking questions. The other call girls know things. They also know what happens to girls who talk, and the episode does its best work in the gap between those two facts.

Peter Straker's Jeremy Miller is the pimp at the centre of it all. But the script is careful to make him plausible rather than monstrous — a man who frightens his girls the way other men file paperwork, as a matter of routine. Straker's Miller is quietly chilling precisely because he never raises his voice. Maggie suspects the 'frighteners' have been put on, and proving it means peeling back the fear one witness at a time.

Catherine Schell's Margot gives the show one of its better scenes, all careful eyes and carefully chosen words. Trevor Peacock's Gerald Portman and Mona Bruce's Alison Portman drift through with the air of people who would rather be anywhere else, and James Ottaway's George Taylor supplies the station's running commentary. William Marlowe's Russell, Derek Thompson's Fenton and Brian Gwaspari's Croft make up the rest of the inquiry, with Nigel Rathbone's Steve Forbes on the edges. The show is good on the way fear keeps the girls in line more reliably than any lock.

Terence Feely wrote the script alone this time, and Paul Annett directed.

The word 'frighteners' is the whole episode in one term: violence held in reserve, promised rather than performed. Melody's death hangs over every conversation, and the show trusts you to remember her even when the living have stopped mentioning her. The investigation is as much about remembering Melody as about solving her death, and the episode never loses sight of her.