Sgt. Catherine Cawood
The sense of duty and justice to this strong-willed and pugnacious police officer, shines her in a light of morality of the utmost rectitude. She is feisty, as a cocky young arsewipe's nads would testify (appropriately). Her watch is a small town in the Yorkshire valleys, but any similarity with Nick Rowan's patch is purely geographical. In fact, there is absolutely no connection with Aidensfield at all: the one being a gentle village with charm, the other a concrete monstrosity with a rife drugs problem. That Catherine seems to be in a constant state of despair is hardly surprising, for who would want to even live in, let alone police, this shit-hole. Actually, existing would be a more apt description as the place is permeated with a general ennui of which only the ingesting of hard narcotics can even try to alleviate.
Perhaps one feels that Catherine herself could do with a large amount of illegal substances to drag her out of her melancholic mood. For not only is she haunted by the spectre of her dead daughter, but is soon confronted by the man who drove her child to suicide: Tommy Lee Royce, an all round villain if ever there was one, and to complicate matters the father of her grandson. I've scoured the Oxford English Dictionary to find words to be most applicable to this man, and the two I can best come up with are Evil and Twat. The kidnapping of a local entrepreneur's daughter, orchestrated by a disgruntled accountant, sees Royce in all his distasteful glory as he manipulates the other gang members in their criminal enterprise. That he positively enjoys inflicting all manner of indignities and physical assaults of the most appalling intensity (particularly with a car on a young policewoman), graphically illustrates what a psychopathic tosser he really is.
That our heroine devotes her whole waking hours, and probably even her sleeping ones, to the capture of this criminal, prompts one to give thanks to the angels of righteousness who subliminally guide good agents of law enforcement to the apprehension of such perpetrators of ill. It is not at all easy for her, though, as she has to deal with her own domestic problems and what seems to her to be top-brass ineptitude to boot.
The said abduction then starts to unravel, and Catherine begins to close in on the gang. Panicking, the leader (soon for a bullet between his lugholes) tells Royce to 'dispose' of their prisoner, but the moron thinks he has a better idea, hiding her in his mother's cellar. Although a patrol sergeant, Cawood used to be a detective and her acquired sleuthing qualities lead her to the hole where the girl is being held. There follows a sickening assault on our copper, which even Hannibal Lecter would find distressing, and we see her collapsed on a road after having rescued the victim. Royce escapes, and one feels that there really is no justice in this world.
With uncontrollable glee, we see our woman pull through and recover (at least physically). Now she puts all her effort into catching Royce, who has killed two more, one being a partner in the crime, but not before he has taken a bad stab wound to the abdomen (you wished it had gone a few inches lower). He takes refuge on a river barge and manages to get in touch with his son Ryan, Catherine's grandson. She tracks him down and manages to give Royce a really good kicking, to which every blow is music to one's ears. Pleading for death, our sergeant displays the ultimate integrity and denies him this cop out. He's carried away, and you somehow know it's going to be for a very long time with a fireside seat waiting for him in Hades.
It was a rocky ride, but it got there in the end. Justice. Sergeant Catherine Cawood, we salute you; a remarkable character in a tale that would even have Harry Callahan reaching for the anti-depressants.
