Trial & Retribution XVI: Kill The King (2)

Gary Webster dies before he can be cleared of anything, and the aftermath is exactly as grim as you'd expect. There's a DPS enquiry to endure, Palmer is badly shaken by how the zoo stand-off ended, and Gemma Webster absorbs the news with a stoicism that's harder to watch than tears would be. Gary wasn't the killer. All the man ever wanted was a straight answer about his daughter, and the system couldn't even manage that.

The case resets itself around that failure. Adrian Lawson offers the team a video recording of Amber's surgery, showing a purely routine procedure, nothing amiss. Connor isn't buying the helpfulness. Nobody hands over footage that might implicate himself or his hospital, so the video tells her less than it claims to. Her real point is simpler and better: Amber died in intensive care six hours after the operation. Whatever went wrong happened in that window, among whoever was on duty that night.

Walker, meanwhile, thinks his team is wasting time on hospital negligence while Carlisle's murderer walks free. But Connor's hunch that the surgeon's death and the little girl's death belong to the same story nags at him until he pays Gemma a quiet visit. He promises a full investigation, tells her Carlisle was killed with a massive overdose of fentanyl, and asks whether she's been holding anything back. She says nothing. It's a beautifully played scene, two people who both know more than they're prepared to give.

Then the suspicion lands on Lawson himself, and when Walker questions him again, his loyalty to his old mentor starts to rot under the pressure. Seething, he points Walker away from the hospital entirely: look at what Carlisle was actually doing those six hours. And so the sordid side of the great surgeon surfaces, exactly as this show always suspected it would. Hattie Morahan returns as Sally Lawson and David Verne plays Tony; no writer or director is credited for this half.

A strong close. Walker investigating a friend is Hayman at his best, and the answer costs nearly everyone something.