The Bill: Find the Lady. DS John Boulton and DS Claire Stanton are pursuing a terrified runaway witness who holds the key to bringing down a crime boss - though only Claire is aware that the case could also bring down one DS Don Beech. When Boulton gets the witness into a hidden location only he knows, said crime boss decides the answer is to torture and then kill him for that information, but that's a line even Beech isn't willing to cross. As the walls start closing in, Beech takes a desperate gamble to confess all to Boulton and try to get him to cross the line to help them both - with catastrophic consequences. This stunning and tragic episode sees the avalanche well and truly starting to fall, and the death of John Boulton is just laden with dramatic irony, from Claire being unable to quite trust her lover enough to tell him the truth about herself and Beech, that John is himself becoming suspicious of Claire for the wrong reasons and inadvertently tips Beech off that there's more to her than meets the eye, and finally that Don ends up killing the man he was willing to compromise his secrets to try to save. It's heartbreaking stuff.
