McCallam :: Key To My Heart :: DC Small

Series 1 - Episode 1. 28th December 1995. Screencaps

This episode guide is only for the parts that Alex appears in and as a result, certain parts may not make complete sense. Please check tv.com for a full episode guide.


DC Small (Alex), DI Bracken and Tom Victor are sat in a car waiting for Dr Ian McCallum to turn up to investigate the circumstances of a body found when the tide had gone out. DC Small is obviously younger than the other men and is nodding his head and tapping out the rhythm to a song on the steering wheel whilst DI Bracken looks on, unamused. When his female superior, Claire Best, tells him off, Small and the other men joke about her sexual preferences, Bracken telling him that she wouldn't go for him. When Ian arrives he is given the history of the dead body – a Vietnamese man who had been under investigation for a month before his death.

When the body is returned to Pathology, Small, Bracken and Best join the team to watch the Post Mortem to find out what had most likely happened. Small is the first to start to feel ill at the smell of the body and makes a joke about wanting to make the second half of a football match at Upton Park (Home ground of West Ham – Alex's favourite football team!). When the PM is finally started, Small attempts to almost hide behind his superior officers and turns pale, as though he's about to vomit as he loosens his tie.

McCallum and Best have a one night stand and after suffering from nightmares about his ex girlfriend, McCallum leaves at 4am to see her and the two make up. The next morning, Small is one of the first officers on scene at Best's flat when she is found murdered, thought to be because of a domestic argument with a boyfriend. McCallum panics and vomits in the toilet, knowing he is the prime suspect, but Bracken passes it off as shock from knowing the victim and tells him off as the toilet hadn't been checked forensically. Small finds a file from the fraud squad that had been emptied and it is discovered that she died in similar circumstances to the Vietnamese man.

'Smally' and his colleagues discuss what Best knew about the case and speculate on her meetings with some of the big names in the case and the other missing fraud files that she'd checked out and taken home with her. Bracken instructs Small and Victor to go back to the station and set up an indepth search after discovering that Best was strangled and then shot.

Small talks to the barman of the Dog and Duck, frustrated by how unhelpful he is. Bracken asks McCallum about a condom and he feigns ignorance, relived when it's revealed that DC Small found the condom in the toilet, and not that he's been found out although he grows more nervous as he discovers Fuzzy Brighton is checking the contents and that Bracken thinks whoever slept with her, killed her. McCallum checks his DNA against that of the results from the condom, proving to be a perfect match.

During his checking of all the burger bars and resturants, DC Small spots a burger van and goes to speak to the owner. When the owner recognises the picture of Claire Best, Small brings him in and puts together an ID fit from the description of the man Claire was with, unmistakably resembling McCallum. McCallum finally opens up to his best friend, Tom Victor and explains what had happened. Tom urges him to tell Joanna and then Bracken whilst he will tries to sort things out for him, however before he gets chance, Bracken and Small arrive to arrest him.

Joanna and McCallum are both interviewed and Joanna confesses that they argued and then he had a shower. Bracken tries to make him admit that he'd done it as a crime of passion and McCallum's mind is in overdrive, trying to reason out see what had happened. The next morning he's released and is driven back by Angela and Paddy, both warning him that he'd be lucky not to be struck off. Small follows him for as far as he can, but McCallum escapes once on his own on his motorbike, heading down alley's that a car couldn't follow.

A new post mortem is ordered on the body and before anyone else can look at it, McCallum starts to check the body over, trying to stay undetected by the others. Zooming into the bruises he discovers that she wasn't strangled by hand, but by a belt and he calls Victor. Victor tells him that there's a warrant out for him but he agrees to meet him.

Bracken and Small try and put the frighteners on Joanna but she tells them that she has something she wants to show them, discovered from a meeting with Best's parents. Looking through old photographs they find that the boyfriend Claire had tried to hide was infact Tom Victor, a married family man and McCallum's best friend. As McCallum recounts what had happened – Best's boyfriend finding out about her sleeping with McCallum, he realises that Tom is wearing a belt that matches the bruises on her neck and fits the final pieces together as Victor starts to unravel to McCallum and Small reveals to Joanna and Bracken that Victor is nowhere in the building.

Victor admits that he loved Claire and couldn't let her walk away, but didn't want to lose his family. He starts to call for assistance, giving McCallum long enough to write his name on the back of a printout of the bruising from the belt and to take the cigarette but to be tested for DNA, putting them in the safe. Victor hears the safe close and looks up, panicking when he realises that McCallum has his DNA and aims a gun at his friend, threatening him. Small storms the building with Bracken and order Victor to put the gun down and give himself up, only for Victor to shoot himself in the head and die.