Solidarity (2)

The truth about Piers Kennedy, when it finally arrives, is nastier than the conspiracy. Murray's tape shows Piers and three others attacking a nuclear convoy, an assault that left a policeman dead, and for a while the team assume the government had him killed in revenge. Then Eve, released from custody, finds the real story. Piers had terminal bone marrow disease, and he knew it. He had joined the peace movement to discredit it from the inside, using calculated violence while the clock ran down on him. The hero was the saboteur all along.

The confession sets off a chain that nobody controls. Murray confronts Lucy, and she confirms that she, Hugo, Piers and Murray himself made up the four attackers. Then Lucy is murdered, and Murray is left holding the frame. Boyd takes him into protective custody, and the team start looking further back: who tipped the quartet off about the convoy, and who wanted the attackers silenced badly enough to keep killing?

But the case keeps taking before it gives. Another death follows before Piers' killer is exposed, and Grace nearly dies in the middle of it. The cost of the case lands on the team itself. Sarah Cavendish, the newcomer, tells ACC Smith in so many words that she doubts Boyd's fitness to lead. After an episode that has spent its run threatening his people, you can see her point.

Barbara Machin and Ed Whitmore wrote it, with Andy Hay directing. Trevor Eve's Boyd, Sue Johnston's Grace, Tara Fitzgerald's Eve, Wil Johnson's Jordan and Eva Birthistle's Cavendish carry the story, with John McArdle as Murray, Kieran Bew as young Murray, Susie Emmett as young Grace, Anna Chancellor as Lucy and Frances Tomelty as Hussey.

The conspiracy turns out to be a dying man's spite. That is more unsettling than any government plot, and the episode knows it.