Burn Out (2)

Just when the case looks settled, someone finds a note. It reads as confirmation of the suicide verdict on Perry Coleman, the tidy full stop the family and the coroner both wanted. Boyd isn't satisfied, and the team exhumes the body. The DNA results that come back unsettle everyone, and by the end of the hour the neat explanation has come apart in their hands.

Before that, the episode does its quieter work. Mike Coleman, Marina's uncle, and Gwen, her mother, are brought in for questioning while Frankie searches the house. Among her finds are the items recovered from the car nine years ago, and from those the squad starts building a different shape of story: Perry, it seems, was being blackmailed by Rod Brogan, a friend of his. That's the sort of revelation that reframes everything around it. A man who dies in a crash while carrying a secret like that wasn't simply a victim of the road, and everyone who loved him has to look again at what they thought they knew.

The exhumation is the hinge. There's something peculiarly British about the way the show handles it, all paperwork and permission slips before anyone touches a spade, and then the science simply walks in and contradicts the paperwork. Boyd's instinct that the note was too convenient turns out to be the whole case.

Peter Jukes and Barbara Machin wrote it, Edward Bennett directed. Trevor Eve leads as Boyd, with Sue Johnston's Grace Foley, Holly Aird's Frankie Wharton, Claire Goose's Amelia Silver and Wil Johnson's Spencer Jordan, plus Simon Kunz as DAC Christie. Angela Griffin is Marina Coleman, Clive Russell plays Perry, Ralph Brown is Mike and Beverly Hills is Gwen.

It's a strong second half. The family drama and the forensics pull in the same direction for once, and the ending lands because the evidence has been earned scene by scene. Marina spent years being told she was wrong. She wasn't.