Old Habits

The pathologist spots it before anyone else does. The young woman found strangled, Ellie Creed, carries the same marks as a string of unsolved murders from a decade earlier, and the case is suddenly old history as well as fresh grief. Wycliffe and his team have to dig out evidence that has been sitting in files for over ten years and see whether the pattern is real or just a sad coincidence.

Ellie's father has just been imprisoned, which puts the family in a particular sort of misery, and the list of suspects is thin. But Hugh Samford stands out: he was in the frame years ago and has come back to Cornwall after a long absence; he has no alibi for Ellie's death or for that of a second young woman. Meanwhile Kersey is working closely with Inspector Jill Gillespie, who liaised with the Creed family and is, awkwardly, married. The professional and the personal get tangled in a way that makes the eventual reveal land harder. When the true killer is finally exposed, it is not the man everyone has been watching.

W.J. Burley and Scott Cherry wrote it, John Glenister directed. Aired in August 1996, it closed the third series. Jenny Merrett is Ellie, Hans Matheson is Gary Creed and Eileen Davies is Hannah Creed. Suzan Sylvester is Jill Gillespie, with Tim Wylton's Franks, Adam Barker's Potter and Aaron Harris's Dixon supporting Jimmy Yuill's Kersey, Helen Masters's Lane and Jack Shepherd's Wycliffe.

It is a story about patterns, and about how the police can be right about the shape of a crime while wrong about the face of the criminal. The old habits of the title belong to more than one person. Ten years of files and nobody reads them closely enough until it is nearly too late. That feels true, and it is what stays with you.