Fugue States (2)

Part two, and the missing twins are still the engine of everything. Boyd's team has linked their disappearance to a Dr Donald Roper, and working out how the children were taken, and why, drags the squad straight through his past. It is not a past you'd want read aloud. The further they dig, the darker it gets.

Then the case turns personal in the worst possible way. Mel discovers that the suspected kidnapper she shot during the investigation was Roper himself, the man who had once knocked Jason down, who had been an adoptive father to him, and who championed child abuse while holding a medical degree. That alone would be enough to sit with. But by the time she learns his name, Roper is dead too, murdered, and whatever he knew died with him or didn't, depending on how much the killer left undone.

Which leaves Cindy. The squad pieces together who she actually is, and from there it becomes a straight race: find her before it's too late. The episode handles this well, keeping the procedural machinery running while letting the emotional cost pile up quietly underneath. Nobody on this team comes out of Roper's history unbloodied.

Ed Whitmore and Barbara Machin wrote it, Ben Bolt directed, and it went out on BBC One in July 2004. Trevor Eve leads as Det Supt Peter Boyd, with Sue Johnston as Dr Grace Foley, Holly Aird as Dr Frankie Wharton, Claire Goose as DS Amelia Silver and Wil Johnson as DI Spencer Jordan. Around them: Sean McGinley as Roper, Ray Stevenson as Dr Tim Faulkner, Denise Black as Ingrid Faulkner, Elizabeth Quinn as Sheila Mason and Maimie McCoy as Sarah Faulkner.

What stays with you is the cruelty of the timing. Mel shoots a man in the line of duty and then finds out he deserved far worse than a bullet. The show doesn't let her, or us, feel clean about it, and it's right not to. Cold cases are rarely tidy, and this one refuses to pretend otherwise.