Bad Dates

Rob Trew walks out into the Abbotsfield Estate with a weapon hidden in his bag. A man campaigning for Mayor Zafar Jaffrey approaches him, offering the ordinary conversation of an election campaign. Trew answers by firing on the people around him. Before the attack can settle into the familiar explanation of a gunman acting alone, a sniper shoots Trew from above. The killer who supplied the opportunity has also removed the person who could explain it.

Emma Flyte reaches a crime scene whose first explanation is already inadequate. Trew’s death cannot simply be filed beside his victims as a suicide. His online activity suggests somebody has encouraged his violent resentment, while the gun and the separate shot point to an organiser with resources. At the Park, Taverner treats those connections as an intelligence problem. Whelan must warn the mayoral candidates, placing their rival campaigns alongside a crisis neither can keep out of politics.

At Slough House, Roddy is moving through his morning with headphones and extravagant confidence when a white van nearly hits him. Shirley pulls him clear. She regards the manoeuvre as deliberate, but the office sees another incident in her increasingly anxious response to danger. Marcus’s death has left her alert to another attack, and she wants protection her boss will not provide. Saving Roddy does not automatically earn belief; her state of mind becomes the reason for dismissing her account.

The office also has a leaving party to endure. Louisa is taking leave, and River initially understands it as a temporary absence. When the two talk away from the others, she makes clear that returning is not part of her plan. River attempts to turn their closeness into a kiss. It is a painful misreading: she is explaining the life she wants to leave, while he reaches for something that might keep her connected to his. Their friendship offers no easy way to repair the moment.

Shirley follows Roddy after work and discovers him meeting Tara for a nightclub date. Catherine follows Shirley, then calls for help. River arrives, but his presence does not calm matters. Shirley jumps down to confront a man whose bottle she has mistaken for a weapon. In the toilets, River challenges her cocaine use and the grief driving her behaviour. The argument exposes wounds neither can manage for the other. Roddy, meanwhile, leaves with Tara, unaware that he remains under scrutiny.

Tara ends the evening without going home with him. From the taxi, she sends a message announcing that Roddy is on his own. The audience now has evidence Shirley never managed to produce for her colleagues. Her alarm was tangled up with trauma, but the danger was real. The episode closes with Roddy mistaking the most vulnerable position of his life for another success.