Pen Verrity

As played by Michelle Forbes

Sexy, mysterious and skirting a breakdown, Pen Verrity is the forensic psychiatrist assisting Mike Sweeney on a homicide involving the death of a baby. But Pen’s own daughter recently drowned and her husband’s looking for a divorce. She holds fast to her son Mark in what looks to Mike like a vicious custody battle. Husband Jonathan launches his case against her, accusing her of being a danger to their son, and the murderer of their daughter. In the mistaken belief that Pen is a victim of abuse, Mike tries to help her. Happy that there is at least one person he can protect, he finds himself getting closer and closer to her. Mike’s partner Tom, however, doesn’t conceal his suspicions of her. Pen is lost, deeply damaged, and moved to unearth what’s buried inside her. When she realizes what she’s done, and aware that her daughter’s death was a psychotic reenactment of an old trauma, she looks to find her own kind of justice.