Standing Stone

Sophie Cattran goes missing after her evening class, and her belongings turn up at the Devil's Gateway, a ring of standing stones that local superstition has long linked to the entrance to Hell. It is exactly the sort of name the Cornish would give a place they wanted people to avoid. For Kersey the case is personal before it's professional: Sophie is the wife of his friend Mike. Then the class tutor is found murdered, and the worry turns to something worse. The stones have a reputation long before the police arrive, and the episode uses it without ever going full horror film.

Mike does his best to explain his wife. She disappeared once before, he says, without her medication, and she almost killed somebody. The details sit in the air, and everyone present does their own arithmetic. When Sophie turns up again, the relief is short. Sophie's reappearance answers one question and opens three more. The police end up in a dash back to the Devil's Gateway to stop another killing, racing the superstition and the woman caught inside it.

The episode leans on the stones the way the show leans on the Cornish countryside, and they're good for atmosphere. But the story is really about a marriage the husband doesn't fully understand and a colleague whose judgement is wobbling. Kersey's relationship with Lucy Lane is pulling him into deep water, and the thread runs under the chase. Wycliffe watches from the edges, the steady presence the episode needs while its lead detective wobbles.

Written by Carolyn Sally Jones, directed by Jack Shepherd. Jimmy Yuill as DI Doug Kersey, Helen Masters as DI Lucy Lane, Lucy Cohu as Sophie Cattran, Thomas Lockyer as Mike Cattran, Matthew Mitchell as Det Sgt Ken Robins, Lynn Farleigh as Helen Wycliffe, Jack Shepherd as Det. Supt. Wycliffe, Ralph Watson as John Combes, Sarah Lincoln as the WPC and Marylou Fontaine as the 1st Mature Student.