Trial & Retribution XXII: Shooter (2)

Satchell's family are still missing as the second night opens, and he is close to the edge. His instinct is to go straight at the Bilkins, consequences be damned, and it falls to Roisin Connor to talk him out of a confrontation that would almost certainly end badly for him. Meanwhile the official investigation grinds on: Walker and Connor need evidence solid enough to put the whole family away, and the Bilkins do not intend to make that easy.

The more interesting worry sits inside the police station. Walker keeps coming back to one question: how did the Bilkins know that Satchell had seen Miller killed? Only a handful of people could have known, which leaves him wondering whether someone on his own team is taking the gangsters' money. It is an ugly suspicion to carry through an investigation, and the episode milks it well, letting mistrust seep into rooms where colleagues should be able to speak freely.

There is relief along the way. Kay and Abigail Satchell are released unharmed, which spares us the bleakest version of this story, though the damage done to Satchell by the days spent not knowing is its own kind of cost.

Tony McHale wrote the conclusion and Benjamin Ross again directed. David Hayman and Victoria Smurfit lead as Walker and Connor, with Dorian Lough given far more to do than usual as Satchell; Gary Whelan plays Lenny Bilkin, Jaimi Barbakoff returns as Zoe, and Celia Henebury is DC Carol Short.

Two-part cases live or die on whether the second night earns the first, and this one does, mostly. The mole-hunting gives the procedural half some proper menace, and Lough plays desperation without tipping into melodrama. My only quibble is that the answer to who leaked feels slightly underexplored once it arrives. Still, ending the series' run of cases with a copper's own home turned against him is a fittingly sour note for this show to go out on.