Seen a Ghost

A woman drives her car straight at another woman on a pedestrian crossing and kills her. That alone would be a full episode. What makes "Seen a Ghost" stranger is the driver's explanation: Morna Petheric swears the victim was a ghost, back from childhood to haunt her. The title is doing a lot of work. The episode earns it.

The pathologist's report backs up part of the story. Dinah Curran carried stab wounds from years earlier, and Morna has always believed she killed her as a little girl. But the truth is murkier. Dinah had once been married to Morna's uncle, and her affair with Morna's father had set the family on a course somebody eventually decided to end. The confession that finally breaks the case comes from an unexpected direction: Morna's mother.

Meanwhile the enquiry board's findings land. Superintendent Le Page returns with a report that fully clears Doug Kersey, which is good news for a man who has spent the series under a cloud. The sting is for DCC Stevens, criticised for bad management. The show's police never get a quiet week: the force is out solving crimes while its own institution sits in judgement over it.

Written by W.J. Burley and Isabelle Grey, directed by Michael Brayshaw. Jack Shepherd as Det. Supt. Wycliffe, Michael Attwell as DCC Stevens, Emily Joyce as Morna Petheric, Jimmy Yuill as DI Kersey, Sharon Duce as Supt. Le Page, Helen Masters as DI Lane, Peter Gale as John Curran, Tamsin Greig as Dr. Hinkley, with Mark Kempner as the Auctioneer and Raymond Adamson as the Auction Porter.

Families keep their secrets for decades, and it usually takes something violent to shake them loose. Here it takes a car on a pedestrian crossing and an enquiry nobody asked for, with an old stab wound sitting in the file the whole time. The wonder is that the silence held as long as it did.