Bad Blood

Two female crooks raid a security van and take a handsome passer-by hostage on the way out. It is a small, fast crime, the kind the squad files without thinking. Then Grace Harris interviews the hostage, and the case stops being small. The man is charming and easy to talk to, smooth in the way that should set off alarms, and before the paperwork is dry she has spent the night at his flat.

The man is Francis Conti, a witness who turns out to have all the charm of a rattlesnake. And Harris is tough, tough as old boots, and she does not see it coming. The attraction reads as ordinary until it is not. By the time the truth about Conti surfaces, she has put more than her heart on the line. Her career is in the balance, and her life with it. The episode makes sure you remember who pays for a night out like that.

Brendan J. Cassin wrote it, Crispin Reece directed, and it aired on 31 October 1996. Pooky Quesnel's Harris carries the episode, and Mark Aiken's Conti makes the danger easy to understand; you can see why she believed him. Reece Dinsdale's Scott, Brendan Coyle's Tate and Gary McDonald's Oxford do the policing around her. Susan Aderin plays Jennifer, Adjoa Andoh plays Mrs Higgins, Ariyon Bakare plays Joseph, Heidi Monsen plays Charlotte, Gavin Muir plays George Waring, and Karen Frawley plays the cashier.

Bad Blood is a slow burn in a show that usually moves fast, and the change of pace suits it. The robbery is just the doorway; what walks through is a copper falling for the wrong man, and the episode is patient enough to make that believable. The audience can spot Conti a mile off, which is exactly the point. Harris cannot see it, and that is where the danger lives.