Payment In Blood

Cast
Nathaniel Parker .... Detective Inspector Thomas Lynley
Sharon Small .... Detective Sgt. Barbara Havers
James McAvoy .... Gowan Ross
Naomi Frederick .... Elizabeth
Ronald Pickup .... Sir Stuart Stinhurst
Yvonne O'Grady .... Joy
Jonathan Firth .... Rhys Davies Jones
Camilla Power .... Joanna Sydeham
Idris Elba .... Robert Gabriel
Julian Wadham .... David Sydeham
Don Gallagher .... Inspector Macaskin
Gary Cross .... Sergeant Lonan
Lesley Vickerage .... Helen Clyde
Ravin J. Ganatra .... Forensic Pathologist
Ron Donachie .... John Ross
Barbara Horne .... Solicitor

Directed by Kim Flitcroft
Written by Elizabeth Mickery, based on a novel by Elizabeth George
First Broadcast on BBC One April 15, 2002

Plot

A small professional theatre company are rehearsing a new play in the large Scottish house (Westbray) belonging to producer Sir Stuart Stymhurst. One morning the playwright Joy Sinclair is found dead in her bed, killed by a fatal stab wound through her neck.

Lynley and Havers are called to assist the Strathclyde police in this investigation. Upon their arrival Lynley is astonished to discover that his good friend (and Met profiler) Helen Clyde has also been staying at Westbray as a guest of the play's director Rhys Davies- Jones. It transpires early on in the investigation that Helen and Davies-Jones are lovers. To complicate matters Lynley quickly decides that Davies-Jones, a reformed alcoholic, is the main suspect as (having slept with Helen on the night of the murder) his fingerprints were found on the door connecting Helen's room to the victims. Lynley's evident dislike and suspicion of Davies-Jones is increased when he discovers that his first wife had left him because of physical abuse.

Ultimately the mystery revolves around who is the real father of the young Gowan Ross (the troubled teenage son of the local innkeeper), transpiring that it could be any one of the men in the theatre group each of whom had visited the area many years before. Sir Stuart Stymhurst is convinced he is Gowan's father, whilst Davies-Jones and David Sydeham (a theatrical agent) seem unconcerned as to his parentage. The brutal murder of Gowan in the boiler room deepens the mystery further.

Lynley's growing romantic interest in Helen Clyde is evident for the first time in this episode, and manifests itself as a deeply suspicious jealousy of Rhys Davies-Jones. Lynley succeeds in behaving most unprofessionally towards the suspect -at one point threatening him quite forcefully - and alienating the already aloof Helen even further. At the climax of the episode whilst Helen is grateful (and surely flattered!) for all of Lynley's endeavours to protect her, she is mostly angry with Lynley and they part company on bad terms. Lynley is left feeling rejected and confused, doubting his own professional judgement as a police inspector.