Wire in the Blood

The Colour of Amber (5x1)

: 11, 2007

Dr Tony Hill and DI Alex Fielding are in a race against time when a young girl is seen being snatched by a man in a car. Alex knows her chances of finding the girl alive are falling sharply as the first hour slips by and reacts by calling an Amber alert. The media is flooded with pleas for information. Meanwhile Tony is building a profile of likely abductors. He rules out the first police suspect: a paedophile recently re-homed on the estate. The man prefers boys but as public anger rises he has to sit in a police holding cell for his own safety. Meanwhile, a distraught mother, Celeste comes forward identifying the missing girl as her daughter Janita. She should be safely at school, but neither she nor her young friend Mikey turned up. Celeste is stricken because Janita’s twin died in infancy. Is she going to lose another child? Tony knows that a likely abductor will know the area and know his escape routes. But searches produce no matches. And although she struggled, the abducted girl had her chance to run but didn’t take it. So was the abductor a stranger, or someone she knew after all? Janita’s father and step-father both have alibis. When Janita’s friend Mikey, the last person to have seen her alive, is found trying to burn his blood-stained school uniform he also enters the frame as a possible suspect. But Mikey refuses to talk.