D.S. Harry Box

DS Harry Box is the detective called in when a young man is found with a dead girl and no clear memory of what happened. He is methodical, unshowy, and used to reading guilt off a face. He wants the case closed cleanly, and he is not in the business of second-guessing the evidence in front of him.

Bill Paterson plays procedure as its own kind of menace — the quiet, unhurried certainty of a man who has done this a thousand times and trusts the system to sort out the rest. There's no cruelty in him, which is what makes his indifference to doubt so unsettling to watch.