Trial & Retribution XIX: Tracks (1)

Maria Cole is found dead in a chalk pit, and the ground does what ground always does in this show: it talks. Three sets of vehicle tracks lead away from the scene, and they carry Connor and Walker straight to Ray Harper, the local hardman, whose son Andy was out driving there with his friend Darren Lewis the night before.

The boys admit being at the pit. They deny ever seeing Maria. Both things can be true, and for a while it looks as if they are. Andy is a bright teenager with a self-made father; Darren is from the other side of the tracks, so to speak, and already has form with the police. You can guess which of the two the investigation warms to first. The show notices that too, quietly, without making a lecture of it.

The story starts leaking anyway. Maria worked as a lap dancer at a club where Harper took his son, and Andy fled from her, which is an odd thing to do if she was a stranger. Then CCTV from a garage, where Maria went after being threatened by hoodies, shows her getting into a car with Andy and Darren. By the end of the hour both boys are charged with her murder, and you're left holding two possibilities at once: they did it, or they were simply the last people to see her alive, which in practical terms comes to much the same thing.

Dudi Appleton and Jim Keeble wrote it, Tristram Powell directed. David Hayman and Victoria Smurfit lead as Walker and Connor, with Matthew Beard as Andy, Jason Maza as Darren, Roy Marsden as Ray Harper and Ashley Madekwe as Maria. Leah Coombes plays Justine Harper, Kevin Doyle is Keane, Martin Heathcote plays Sgt West and Nick Bartlett gets the club manager.

The pressure here isn't on the detectives, who work methodically enough. It's on two teenage boys learning how quickly a bad night becomes a charge sheet.