Blue Murder - Desperate Measures
Monday 10 December 2007 9:00pm - 10:30pm on ITV1.
Don Halliwell (Simon Williams), a respected GP nearing retirement, is shot on the doorstep of his surgery, shocking the local community. When one of Halliwell’s younger colleagues cannot be traced in the aftermath of the shooting there are fears for his life.
While efforts are made to contact the missing doctor, suspicion falls on the Wilson gang, widely believed to be responsible for a previous robbery on the surgery.
Dr McKee (Luke Mably) initially refuses to account for his movements, but eventually admits he was being coerced into helping with the earlier robbery to pay off his debts. He had gone into hiding fearing the killing of Halliwell was a botched attempt on his own life. Janine’s concerned the surgery may have been a target for other reasons. Was a patient with a grudge trying to kill Halliwell?
Halliwell’s colleagues paint a picture of a respected, if not entirely up-to-date practitioner. Understandably his wife, Pamela (Paula Wilcox), is devastated. Butchers (Paul Loughran) is tasked with going through patient records to unearth potential suspects, while Shap (Nicholas Murchie) and Lisa (Rhea Bailey) join Richard and Janine in trying to trace the gun, identified as used in a Wilson gang-related robbery for which Aaron Matthews (Duane Henry) was sent to prison.
While Janine believes Aaron’s making a fresh start, Shap and Richard are more cynical. Aaron’s arrested, but he tries to abscond and in the ensuing mayhem Lisa forgets to complete his caution. Arriving back at the station, Janine realises if Aaron’s the killer, then his statement is inadmissible. Lisa’s gutted, but Janine isn’t too hard on her. In comparison Richard is angry.
Aaron’s cousin Howard is identified as the boyfriend of Marcie Young (Claire Hackett), a single mother mourning the death (by drug overdose) of her daughter Jasmine. Marcie blames Halliwell for her death, as he refused her the methadone to get by.
Janine’s struck by Marcie’s determination to see justice for her daughter, and empathises with her loss. Aaron has a clear motive for using the gun and is the prime suspect, but forensic tests are inconclusive. It’s a tense time for the team as they feel they have the right man but know they could lose the conviction.
Butchers unearths some other disgruntled patients, while Janine finds a history of missing morphine. Halliwell was ‘visiting’ patients who had long since died and writing prescriptions for them. Tracing Halliwell’s final hours uncovers a surprising turn of events. They discover Halliwell was having a long-standing affair with his nurse. On discovering the affair, the nurse’s husband had told Dr Halliwell’s wife Pamela.
When Janine returns to question Pamela, she finds her comatose from an overdose. Recovering in hospital, Pamela confesses she has an addiction to morphine and her husband had been supplying it for years, allowing her to continue a relatively normal life. Far from wanting him dead she desperately needed him alive to keep her drug supply going.
Frustrated, Richard insists they go back through patients details. Perhaps someone who has left the surgery held a grudge and murdered Halliwell. As they go back through files, Shap returns to see Aaron and finds him badly beaten - the gang assumed he’d grassed. Aaron tells Shap the gun was sold to a man later identify as the son of Halliwell’s patient Roy Gant (Simon Gant had killed himself eighteen months ago). With a firm lead for Halliwell's murder Janine and Lisa go to arrest Gant, but is it too late?
