Could a record remain locked even when there's no client anymore who keeps the lock ? If so how can this be tracked and/or resolved

Let me explain what I bumped into, just 5 minutes ago :
I have a program that executes a tableupdate(2,.f.) on a certain view. The update didn't work for only some of the records (mainly it works just fine), even if I was shure that no-one kept the concerning record(s) locked. When I performed a tableupdate(2,.t.), forcing the update it worked.
How come ?