Ultraviolet Season 1, Episode 6: Persona Non Gratis

Captured vampire is getting more shirty, refusing to drink the bag of blood Vaughan brings him and smearing it across the glass. Father Kill-them-all-and-let-god-sort-it-out Harman shows this is proof that vampires would never give up feeding on people. Angela, rightly, question why they would be researching synthetic blood if that were true.

And Mike gets a recorded message from a vampire on his car – someone called Jacob (journalist fellow of Kirsty’s) demanding to meet. Oh and Kirsty sends her regards.

Switch to Kirsty hiding in a large building with Jacob who tells her he’s hiding her for the sake of the story. She’s afraid because he had a gun and he gave her a mucky look she felt Mike was going to kill her – and is working for a group that killed Jack.

At base the gang is trying to identify who their captured vampire is. They know he’s relatively young because he has a thyroid surgical scar on his throat. They can’t take finger prints because vampires show up in now recorded medium – so even their prints can’t be taken. They’re working on an artist rendition. Harman suggests identifying the surgeon who performed the thyroid operation, but recognising a surgeon’s “style” would require a full autopsy. And yes, Harman does consider slicing up a vampire while he’s still alive to be an “autopsy”.

The gang set off and Angela brings in Harman’s pills which he doesn’t take. They banter for a bit but he tells her he needs his full faculties and can’t take pain killers until the case is over. She accepts this but has her own barb – pain affects judgement and, also, people who want quick answers tend to cut corners. Oooh Angie, you’re beginning to grow on me you are.

Mike is busy with his personal life and goes to see an increasingly irritated Frances. She doesn’t understand Mike’s issues, Kirsty is with Jordan, what’s the problem? Mike says  she doesn’t know what he is which is nicely cryptic so Frances decides she really needs to know what Mike does. But he doesn’t answer, saying she’d have to see it for herself and he hopes she never has to. Which is actually a pretty good answer.

To Jacob’s paper, where he’s now quit apparently. He uses Frances’s technical skills to restore his files and it seems Vaughan is after the same man – because he’s been researching thyroid cancer patients. Frances manages to recover all of his files but Mike tells Vaughan that they didn’t get anything and they leave.

Harman decides to banter with the vampire, asking him about his travels in South America – whicht eh vampire responds with “go see the rainforest before it’s gone, see who the real parasites are.” Score 1 vampire. Harman protests that he thought vampires were beyond nature, vampire responds “we’re all part of the same ecosystem.” Score 2 vampire. Harman scoffs at the idea of humanity making itself extinct and vampire counters that some of the fires in Brazil have burned for years and humans talk about cutting emissions in 20, 30 years, humans live in the now, vampire consider the next 50 years to be “tomorrow.” Score 3 vampire. Harman questions synthetic blood and the vampire says it’d be peace, why would they need to exterminate vampires if they were no threat; Harman says “you exist”. Uh-huh, because that’s a good reason. Score 4 vampire. Harman accuses the vampire of abandoning his humanity to save himself from cancer and the vampire asks who they’re talking about – the vampire or Harman? Score 5 vampire. Harman then flails out and clutches at religion  and the vampire hits back very well, asking what drove Harman to the priesthood – was it vampires? The expression on his face says yes. Has he seen any other indication of god? Again, face says no. So the vampire presents this little logic trap: Harman doesn’t understand vampires, so they must be evil, if there is evil there must be a god. If vampires aren’t evil… then what is Harman doing as a priest? Score 97786557658 Vampire. Priest should leave interviews to Dr. Angela.

Mike and Vaughan continue their investigation and Vaughan can tell there’s something up with Mike. They go to Jordan’s place to search it (Jordan is still hiding with Kirsty and she’s making little comments like “why don’t you ever smell, how do you find time to shower” to remind us what he is – that and him zoning in on Kirsty’s neck. He asks Kirsty if she trust him and the answer’s clearly no – she trusted Jack and Mike). There Mike finds Kirsty’s dressing gown and has a sad moment. They also find a file he has on Mike (old stuff – and Mike denies knowing what set Jordan onto Mike) and a video tape.

Back to the HQ where they watch the tape and see it is footage of forest fires, cutting and burning, Indonesia this time but there are others of Brazil. They connect them to a green conference in Rio in 92.

Kirsty is still suspicious  and, with Jordan gone, checks his lap top but can’t get past the password. She goes to the empty security guard’s seat and checks the CCTV but sees the place empty – except for one person sat in a car in the garage, apparently alone. She goes to investigate – and finds Jordan sat next to the man, sucking on his neck. He jerks away when she arrives and the man he was drinking from slumps, there’s blood around his mouth. He gets out the car, she runs screaming. He chases her, catches her and everything goes black.

She wakes when a man touches her shoulder asking if she’s ok. It’s the security guard and the man who she saw Jordan feeding from. She stares at his neck but there’s not a mark on it. The security guard says Jordan is around and he doesn’t mind Jordan hiding out if he has to (the vampireness may have something to do with that) but her wandering around tripping alarms is going to cause problems. The guard leaves and Jordan appears to point out the guard is fine, he doesn’t take much and it doesn’t hurt (so he’s not going with the “you dreamed it” excuse). He also adds if she’s that terrified she can leave, he won’t stop her and she’ll never see him again. Just like Jack – which is why Michael killed him by the way. Oh that got her attention.

Kirsty asked who did it to him, but he points out vampires consent to change. She says he can’t be the same so he says go home then, Mike was right to kill your husband. She asks what jack would have done and he  says Jack would have invited her to join him if she wanted but she never got the choice.

Back at HQ, Harman, sore for being beaten in rhetoric, has the vampire restrained so they can get on with that wide-awake-and-alive autopsy. Angela holding the knife, which gives the vampire a lot of time to point out they accuse the vampires of losing their humanity but look at what Angela is doing. She tries to draw blood, but only gets air.

Ultraviolet Season 1 Episode 5: Terra Incognita

 A man trying to enter the country from Brazil at an airport passes customs, but is stopped when they notice he is bleeding from his ears. A doctor is called to examine him, and finds a bloody bite on his throat, while the woman he flew in with calls someone waiting in the hospital.

Mike, desperate about Kirsty and her journalist, approaches Frances and asks her to get Kirsty to stop it. Frances refuses – why would Kirsty listen to her, she’s a grown woman and can make her own choices and, besides, Mike’s the one who joined the secret squirrels, it’s his job to handle things like this. She makes a very convincing argument – and that’s aside from the fact Frances doesn’t like Kirsty and is an ex of Mike’s so doesn’t really owe either of them anything.

Back to work and the man is in a hospital bed, with Angela She-who-has-never-heard-of-medical-ethics hovering over his bedside like an especially hygienic vulture. She confirms to Father Kill-them-all-and-let-god-sort-it-out Harman that it’s Code 5 (or V if you going by the Roman numerals we-must-not-say-vampire-ever) and it’s a visible wound because the man has a non-contagious haemorrhagic fever that makes him bleed from any vulnerable spots, even if invisible. More confusingly, his sister asked for Angela by name as an expert for his condition; but she isn’t, not for haemorrhagic fever anyway.

While Vaughan and Mike search through their bags, Harman and Angela interview his sister, Maria. Harman begins in Portuguese before she asks if he speaks English. She says her brother’s condition is sickle cell anaemia and she wants to see Dr. March – Harman gestures to Angela, but she’s looking for a male Dr. March, Angela’s dead husband. This confuses Maria, because she’s sure he’s still alive.

Angela insists the man can’t have sickle cell anaemia, that wouldn’t cause this bleeding. Maria blames the blood transfusions he’s been having but Angela insists that’s impossible and there’s no way a transfusion would have cured sickle cell anaemia, quite agitated and a little patronising, Maria fires back that she has lived with Aguinaldo’s illness all his life, she knows what she’s talking about. She said the transfusions cured him but then he began to bleed.

Harman asks about the bite wound on his neck but she’s silent about it. Angela asks what “they” said about her husband and Harman virtually drags her out of the room. She starts to argue with him but a bored nurse informs her that Aguinaldo is bleeding again and she’s called away

Vaughan and Mike have a conversation about sickle cell anaemia, what it does and how it’s more prevalent in Black people and that it was Angela’s husband’s specialty before the vampires targeted him (probably why they targeted him since they’re interested in blood disorders).  After interviewing the flight crew they learn that the plane was delayed for an emergency cargo of medical supplies.  They arrive in the cargo area just as the truck drives off – with the man Maria was talking to in the passenger seat. Mike tears off after him while Vaughan calls for a helicopter and a road block and checks out the medical supply box they’ve left behind. Inside is something that looks a lot like a metal coffin.

Inside, Angela notices not just the bite but a lump on Aguinaldo’s back which, when pressed, bleeds profusely. Harman continues to interview Maria learning that she was told that Dr. March would not help them because he didn’t do charity but she was sure if she could meet him in person and make him see Aguinaldo there would be no way he’d say no. She had to leave Brazil in a hurry, buying tickets at the airport, so doesn’t even know where Dr. March is. Angela returns to tell maria about Aguinaldo’s health (with the same bedside manner you’d expect from an axe murderer) – and Harman sends her out again; which doesn’t make her a happy bunny.

She returns to Aguinaldo and outs him under and ultraviolet light, revealing dozens of bite wounds.

Vaughan notices the clock on the side of the big metal coffin that seems to be counting down to sunset and after x-raying it and confirming “organs for transplant” he clears out the warehouse and has it moved to a secure facility where men with guns can stare at it. Meanwhile Mike calls off the roadblock so he and his helicopter and his van full of soldiers can see where the other coffins are being delivered.

Vaughan checks on Angela who is frustrated by Aguinaldo’s condition (and I have to give kudos to Angela for, when Vaughan asks what Harman thinks, “stigmata for all I know” and a comment on how she’s not going to ask him for his medical opinion.) And to confuse things Aguinaldo’s medical history does show severe sickle cell anaemia which he’s now cured of and his haemorrhagic fever is undetectable.

As an added complication, Maria is getting impatient, frustrated that she’s not being allowed to see her brother or Angela now, she doubts even whether Harman is a priest and demands to go. Harman has Vaughan take her where she wants to go in the hope she will confide in him.

Ultraviolet Season 1, Episode 4: Mea Culpa

 At a Catholic school, a priest questions a school child, Gary, who forged a note to get himself out of the prayers, claiming to be allergic to the incense and the smoke. The priest asked what changed but the boy just demands to be left alone, that he doesn’t want to be forced. The priest touches him and the boy draws a knife and stabs him before running out of the school.

Angela has her own little family drama with her own daughter and receives a letter; some test samples she’s sent off for Father Harman have come back as “consistent with a non-hodgkins lymphoma” which I think, by her reaction, means cancer. She goes to work to tell him but he’s already left for the mortuary to see the priest who was stabbed.

The boy has left the school and removed the obvious identifying elements of his school uniform and tries to wash the blood off his hands – he squints painfully in the sunlight.

At the mortuary Angela doesn’t understand why it would be a case for them – until Harman shows that the priest had multiple stab wounds and the 12 year old boy who did it had no history of violence. Angela still doesn’t see how they can assume “code 5” involvement, but Harman says the boy was considering the priesthood.

Vaughan and Mike question the other kids and during the questioning Vaughan opens the blinds, several students flinch away from the sunlight. Vaughan is all “this is vampires” but Mike, whose being a cop, doesn’t think it takes vampirism to make a kid an evil little bastard. Vaughan raises the sunlight sensitivity, Mike points out that that’s a diagnosis for meningitis. Angela takes issue and assures him that no-one’s leaping to conclusions so make sure he doesn’t (which makes no sense – he isn’t leaping to conclusions. He’s stopping them from doing so).

In the park, the boy, Gary, is found by a man who brings him home (for nefarious purposes it’s heavily implied). His dog starts barking furiously the minute Gary enters. The dog gets more and more aggressive before attacking Gary. The man dumps Gary at a hospital before running out, going home and dumping his pornography in a black bin bag – it’s hard to tell what it is but I’m presuming paedophilic. He burns it.

At Gary’s mother’s home Vaughan and Mike question her while searching the flat. She says she was relieved that Gary had dropped out of the religious activities, saying it was his father’s idea in the first place. He’d never been violent but was showing sunlight aversion. She says the only social activity he had was choir practice

At the school, Angela examines one of his classmates and finds him not light sensitive (not to electric light anyway) but he panics and is almost in pain when asked to open a Bible. She has the whole school closed and the students sequestered as a ”public health issue” and Mike is furious about the extreme draconian power she uses with so little evidence. She does take some of his complaints to heart and she takes spinal fluid samples. She also does UV light testing on their necks and finds nothing

Mike, meanwhile, is looking at other potential options and questions the football coach about whether the dead Father Downey was a paedophile. The coach says no but Mike searches the priest’s house and finds a computer disk (soooo dated!) and finds some compromising images (which, naturally, they don’t show) of Gary.

He takes the pictures to Father Harman who decides that, since there’s no evidence of Father Downey downloading the pictures, there’s nothing to connect them to him other than them turning up in his house. Which is a pretty huge exception to the idea of “nothing”.  Mike is angry that they won’t turn this other to the police, instead deciding to keep the evidence quiet and deciding to investigate themselves (in episode 1 they already confirmed that they’re not very good at investigating). Mike’s extremely irritated by this, especially since all of these potentially abused children are being forcibly separated from their parents. Angela finally concedes that’s not a good idea since it will draw the media. But Gary still has to stay and Harman is far more concerned by Downey’s reputation than the potential harm to any children (they got that realistic at least!)

They follow up on where Gary was attacked – there was no blood in the park and no-one noticed a dog attack. Vaughan asks if they’re chasing paedophiles or dogs – and Mike says both – and they decide to cf to find paedophiles with dogs.

Angela questions Gary about Father Downey and why he makes Gary sick. When Father Harman enters Gary starts to panic and ask him to go away, Harman ignores him and continues to aggressively question him until even Angela draws the line.

Angela is torn at the idea of vampire infection with no penetration, no feeding which normally infects humans and makes them pliable. They speculate it’s a new form of biowarfare to make the masses more pliant. And it’s time for Angela to give Harman his diagnosis. He takes it calmly, better than her, and they discuss treatment and chances while she dodges giving anything concrete or pessimistic. Meanwhile, Angela’s daughter is giving her the cold shoulder because Angela’s refusal to let her out at night is severely restricting her.

Vaughan and Mike go to interview the paedophile, Colin, with his dog. Colin dodges round all the questioning but Vaughan isn’t having it and grabs him by the neck. The dog reacts and Vaughan kicks it and sends it whimpering out the room. Vaughan tells them they’re not cops and don’t have to play by the rules and starts hitting Colin to make him co-operate. Mike looks away, silently. Colin doesn’t recognise Father Downey but does say he gave his pictures to a man that his dog also barked at  - though the dog was much more scared and he had a “skin allergy” that prevented him going out during the day.

Ultraviolet: Season 1, Episode 3: Sub Judice

A woman, Marion, goes to her car in a dark parking lot to find 2 men waiting for her to rob her. She passes out against a pillar – and then someone unseen does something unseen (honestly, director, are you aiming for a PG rating or something? Is that why we can’t see any of the fight scenes?) that leaves the two men dead on the floor covered in blood.

For some reason we get to see Father Harman wake up. He seems to have had a rough night, probably caused by him trying to sleep while fully dressed. Kirsty tries to track down Mike but he’s moved and the people who live in his house now don’t speak English. Frances, however, has found Mike – because secret-squirrel stuff is her job. She has a house warming plant for him – one of those pot plants everyone tells you is low maintenance and you still manage to kill within a week. She praises him for being sensible in cutting off Kirsty.

At work, Vaughan and lackey review the case in the car park and while they don’t get the attack on camera, they can clearly see no-one approaching or leaving the area. Vaughan raises the possibility that she did it since breaking necks isn’t that hard – which earns him a pointed look.

Harman is getting checked out by Angela though for his night sweats (not terrors, he insists), lost weight and other maladies. He insists they’re not psychological, she gives him A Look.

Looking at the case, we learn Marion is a barrister, her husband killed himself 2 years ago and she’s working on a complicated fraud case involving VAT – and it’s the only thing Vaughan can see the vampires may be involved with since it involves serious money.

Angela goes to interview Marion but, as we’ve seen before, her technique would make even the most innocent person feel attacked and accused. She makes it clear she was unconscious for the duration of the attack. They commiserate over the fact both their husbands have committed suicide.

Angela goes from there to Marion’s doctor and threatens her with being struck off to make her break her patient’s confidentiality. Marion was depressed after her husband died and before he committed suicide they were struggling to have a baby – Marion got pregnant and lost the baby 12 times.

Interviewing her second in the case, Vaughan and Mike learn that he’s brand new and his predecessor, Mr. Keep, was killed in a hit and run. The police don’t consider it deliberate – but do mention he was close to Marion.

They drag Marion in where she demands to know if she’s under arrest (Harman doesn’t answer, such niceties are beyond him) and he grills her about her relationship with Dominic Keep. She refuses to co-operate since Harman isn’t even going through the pretence of acting like she has any kind of rights – then she has a nose bleed which perks Harman up and set the ominous music playing! Pay attention guys, ominous music says this scene is important.  She passes out again, apparently she’s been having a lot of time off work.

Mike exhumes her ex-husband’s body – except it isn’t there. While Vaughan searches Marion’s house. He goes through her medicine cabinet to find medicines that Angela recognises. While Marion is unconscious, Angela decides to do an ultrasound on her (and she’s threatening over doctors with being struck off?) she finds a gestational sack with nothing inside it – and shares the information with Father Harman while taking blood from him to test (Harman, remember wants his medical testing to be handled privately which he’s apparently entitled to).  It could be a natural condition but she’d need a vaginal scan to be sure.

While Angela goes along with her non-consensual medical scans, Vaughan and Mike watch from CCTV cameras – oh, it gets better and better! Vaughan doesn’t believe vampries can father children since they reproduce differently and vampire men are sterile.

Ultraviolet: Season 1, Episode 2: In Nomine Patri

Danni Ashford is visiting an old lady in a nursing home, she’s clearly confused and suffering from dementia, constantly talking without any attention to what people are saying or doing around her. She says good bye and goes out to a car where a man is waiting and has been waiting all night but he assures her there’s no rush. He asks if she answered Danni’s question and she says she thinks so. She frets about not being sure but he encourages patience and assures her she can keep asking as long as she likes.

Don’t you just hate feeling like you’ve come in half way through a conversation?

Mike and Vaughan are playing with guns and 90s computers (ooooh sooo dated!). Jack is still having moral qualms about destroying and entire species and wonders why they don’t try to bring in vampires (a word they refuse to use still) alive – Vaughan says that they’re stronger, faster - better. You can’t give a warning or take chances. He also makes the next target to shoot look like Kirsty to drive home the point that any contact with the outside world puts those people at risk. Mike asks if he has any friends and Vaughan takes him to the shiny vampire locker – all his friends and former soldiers. The vampires knew about the Gulf War Syndrome early and spent a lot of energy investigating it, apparently being very concerned by any diseases in their food supply (y’know, they’re really not doing a good job of selling the “evil vampire” trope here).

A vampire car with tinted windows nearly knocks over a motorcyclist, barging past him. He manages to steady himself and, despite the protests of his passenger, the biker chases after the car. At the red light the car stops, the biker gets off his bike and hits the car with a metal bar, cracking one of the windows, burning the vampires inside and demanding he get out. The vampire rams the car behind then drives through the red light – knocking over the biker’s bike – and his passenger.

Mike goes to see Kirsty (is this his home now? Wow, you didn’t waste any time there Mike!) and Kristy tells him she called his work and learned he resigned. She’s worried how much he’s changing in his life and is worried he blames her for Jack being corrupt – and hopes they have more in common than just Jack. He doesn’t have to answer any questions because Vaughan knocks on the door – and he has a job for him and Mike. Kirsty instantly seizes on him demanding to know where Jack is. She is less than pleased with him refusing to talk to her and Vaughan encourages Mike not to try and make her feel better – it’ll just end up being worse (presumably makes it easier to break from her).

Dr. Angela is examining the wrecked car which is severely burned inside. She examines the dust and tells Father Harman that it’s only a partial immolation. The vampire isn’t dead but not in great shape. The car is owned by a Lester Hammond – the son of a Gideon Hammond – who has fallen off the grid in the last few years for a rich kid.

Interviewing the biker and his girlfriend is difficult. He’s combative and gives Vaughan a lot of grief, he doesn’t see why they’re being questioned. His girlfriend co-operates with Mike from her hospital bed, he keeps trying to get her to tell her boyfriend to calm down and stop making such a lot of noise about the fight but she’s not happy about it either – why shouldn’t he make a stink about it?

To the HQ (I need a snarky name for it) and Father Harman fills in the plot (using his psychic powers of vampire motivations – why does no-one ever question this man and his assumptions?) It’s all about money – Lester Hammond is the son of the very public and very rich figure, Gideon Hammond (who the vampires can’t recruit due to his public nature).  They have the son under surveillance and Mike makes a snarky comment about it not being all “seek and destroy.”

Angela interviews Gideon Hammond and finds that daddy dearest doesn’t have any contact with his son or any time for him and doesn’t even support him financially, he’s washed his hands of him. he does promise to provide for the woman in hospital with the spinal injuries however.

Vaughan and Mike have more awkward conversations (Vaughan had one child, left with his ex), before interviewing Danni Ashford (yes, that Danni) Gideon’s banker – and Lester’s ex-banker who stopped working for him after he stopped taking advice. She also assures them that Lester can’t get Gideon’s money and tells them that Lester was interested in the Futures trade – which takes place in the LIFE (London International Futures Exchange) building. As they head off, Gideon calls Danni and tells her to liquidate everything, he’s closing his account.

At the LIFE building they find a room where all trading is done face to face, there are no windows to let the pesky sun in, Lester can put the bite on anyone to get himself the best deals and the cameras that film everything won’t even pick him up. Perfect – but he has to be doing it using his dad’s account, which means Gideon must be lying to Angela. She doubts any infection since she saw him in broad daylight and he sounded genuinely disdainful of his son.

She also tells them of a mobile phone in the car, meaning Lester wasn’t alone. Vaughan explains that vampires don’t use phones – because machines can’t see or hear vampires, so his voice won’t go down a line.

Meanwhile Danni is on the phone to Lester to double check if he really wants to sell everything since it won’t get anyone off his trail. Lester uses a computer programme to talk over the phone and assures her he does want to – and he types with extremely burned hands.

The team realises Gideon is selling everything and Danni is handling the transaction – and will hand over the money in cash (or deposit drafts) personally to Gideon, which should give them chance grab Lester at the hand over. Mike wonders how much Danni knows but Vaughan points out so long as he has money, Danni won’t care – she’s a banker he’s a vampire, they’re probably related (ooooh, in 1998 no less. What a prescient comment).

In the lab, Angela is doing some experiments (how they’ll beat the vampires in the end, she assures them) when Father Hammond arrives to subtly rebuke her for not being outside tracking down leads. She angrily points out she has tracked down all of the financials and discovered that Gideon is building underground safe houses. He still doesn’t support research since it can take years and they may not have that long (this time scale is based on….? Care to share some of his random insight?)

Ultraviolet: Season 1, Episode 1: Habeus Corpus

 

It’s sunset in London and a man looks very intimidated in the fading light, watching a stationary car with heavily tinted windows.  The panicking man, Pollard, makes a phone call to a bar to speak to a man called Jack, getting Jack’s friend Mike instead. Mike’s not in the mood to put up with Pollard’s “shit”, especially with it being Jack’s stag night and Mike’s the best man. Pollard protests that Jack will understand and it’s the man in the photos; but Mike got the photos and they’re just empty negatives. No-one in them. Then Pollard starts crying.

Being a sucker for tears, Jack drops Mike off at his house and promises to be back in an hour.

Meanwhile, the bad guy (the music tells me he’s evil. Very helpful, that. Just in case I missed it, he’s also got this narrow-eyed squint going on). He menacingly approaches Pollard who is playing in a computer arcade then the camera focuses on Pollard’s face, then evil man’s back, then Pollard has a hole in his stomach. Ok, someone sack the director – that was just weak. You couldn’t afford the special effects budget on a vampire show to show a man being shot?

Mike arrives just in time to hear the screams and see the running man. He rolls Pollard over, then abandons the corpse (not that he checked to see if it WAS a corpse, poor guy could just be badly hurt) and gives chase to the running man who runs down a Tube station. The man ducks down an empty corridor, Jack starts to follow but sees, in a convex safety mirror, that the corridor is deserted and turns back the other way. The Bad Guy doesn’t cast a reflection (just follow the sound of ominous music, Mike!)

Mike goes to check the tube’s CCTV (he’s a police detective) but the cameras have caught no sign of him. The Bad Guy pauses to give us a dramatic evil glare. Just to drive the point home. Mike goes home – but stops off to see Jack’s fiancée, Kristy, first because… I’m not sure why. Possibly to establish illicit sexual tension (if so, 1:30am on the night of your best friend’s stag party, the night before the wedding is sorely lacking in class)

Meanwhile, the drunken, dishevelled Jack is happily staggering down the streets when the music turns Ominous. Yes, the Bad Guy is there. Jack recognises him and asks him what he’s doing there; Bad Guy responds “time’s up.”

The next day, the church is full, the bride, Kristy, is waiting anxiously – and Jack, the groom, is missing. And Mike’s police contacts seem even more concerned than the bride – calling Mike into a briefing while the Bride gets to tell everyone that the wedding’s off.

Mike goes into a full task force which seems to be linking Jack’s disappearance with Pollard’s death and gets introduced to DI Angie March and DS Vaughan Rice (from CIB) who are interested in the case. There’s also no CCTV footage.

Angie asks Mike about the blank photos Pollard took and Mike tells her they were from a counterfeit ring they asked Pollard to investigate and those were what he sent. Pollard was an informant who was rapidly becoming useless.  Angie is pretty heavy with the questioning which Mike objects to; she establishes how little Mike knows and how he only agreed to speak to Pollard to avoiding him gate crashing the reception. She continues to act like he’s run over her cat then reversed over it again for good measure.

Reviewing the CCTV, Mike sees Pollard hit and dramatically die while being completely alone. He goes to check with the pathologist but the bullet wound has burns around it, pointing to a very close range shot. The pathologist assumes he was shot outside and had a delayed reaction due to the large amount of drugs in his system.

Mike goes to comfort Kristy who is very angry – CIB have been to see her and shown her that Jack had an offshore account with £58,000 in it she never knew about; the suspicion is he was corrupt. Mike defends Jack but Kristy is furious, especially since Jack has made no effort to contact her. She collapses into tears and he holds her.

On the drive home, the Ominous Music starts again – bad guys must be about. Mike looks through his rear-view mirror so the Ominous car following him must be Suspicious. Mike goes home and finds his flat being watched (not very subtly) – and Jack waiting for him. Jack tells him to get rid of them so they can talk. Mike drives off again, managing to give them the slip with skilled driving and his pursuers being more than a little incompetent. Having lost the tail, Mike meets Jack in a wide open playground (subtle, reaaaally subtle. Not obvious and suspicious at all) and greets him with a punch in the face. Jack protests that Angie and Vaughan are a death squad out to shoot him on sight and he had to run. He says the phones are tapped, he doesn’t want Mike to tell Kirsty he’s ok since it’s not true, with the death squad and all. Hearing a helicopter he runs off in a complete panic, calling for Mike to meet him in the same place tomorrow night (oh that won’t look suspicious at all. Perhaps you shouldn’t meet in wide open spaces?)

Next day, Mike finds a witness who produces a very good ID sketch of the Bad Guy and confronts his boss about Angie and Vaughan, because he’s checked and they’re definitely not CIB. Boss man knows nothing as well, only that they have a lot of pull. Which is when Vaughan pulls Mike in for another interview revealing that Pollard was giving Jack money and it was Pollard they were following, not Jack (which gives Mike chance to snark about them not being there when Pollard was killed). Vaughan warns Mike not to trust Jack and that he’s lying which Mike, obviously, doesn’t take well and tries to leave. They have a brief scuffle and we see Vaughan has a scar on his neck.

Mike goes to see a woman he clearly has fraught history with – she’s the one who told him that Angie and Vaughan aren’t CIB, but she’s reluctant to do more digging to find out who they actually are. Meanwhile Angie has been playing dirty and told Kirsty that Mike has met Jack and knows something. Mike tells her what Jack said and that he’s trying to find things out – he also urges her to take her honeymoon and get away just in case – she, unsurprisingly, disagrees.