Where do you start after an episode like that? Busting a drug dealer on a construction site, Gene and the rest of the team find a buried body encrusted in concrete, leading to a murder investigation involving a dodgy site manager, Polish labourers and a police officer who should prove very familiar to viewers of the series. It’s hard to review this episode without giving away too many spoilers. Again, we repeat: for those who have yet to see the episode stop reading now… really, it will spoil things too much if you carry on. There was a murder, they find the bad guys, Alex doesn’t wake up yet and Gene kicks in some nonces. That’s all you need to know. Pop over to the 100 movie clichés article, then watch the episode on iPlayer over lunch then come back. It seems that in this 1980s reality, two versions of yourself can exist simultaneously, as we are introduced to PC Summers, a ‘clean’ cop, who Gene entrusts with assisting the team take down of Michael Lafferty. Lafferty is a construction site manager who it seems is using cheap European labour, avoiding paying taxes and with friends apparently in very high places. With Summers and Lafferty at odds with their story, Gene feels he should trust the young PC, whereas Alex is more inclined to believe Rafferty, as it seems that Summers is indeed the young version of the corrupt policeman who knows so much about Alex’s real predicament. With the scene set, things take a much darker tone as we get not one, but two, big ‘reveals’, both of which are very shocking and frankly fantastically played out. So with a dead policeman at her feet and no fingerprints on the gun (apart from Summers), Alex, in sheer panic ,does the unthinkable, burying the body in concrete on the building site, mirroring the murder at the beginning of the episode. Linking in with this, Ray, Chris and Gene are following leads to the murder, trying as best they can to link evidence to Lafferty. They eventually find a piece of paper that has co-ordinates on it in Polish, something that causes a lot of problems as during the investigation, this vital piece of evidence disappears. With this vital clue having been misplaced, Gene finally realises he has a mole in his operation and that problems with evidence disappearing and mismanagement of paperwork are not errors after all, but really a slow methodical calculated attempt to tamper with cases and evidence. In an elaborate plan, Gene sets everyone at the station up, heightening the tension and accusations until the team reach boiling point, blowing up in Luigi’s after days of secrets and subterfuge. With everyone at each other’s throats Genes’ ‘Who can you trust?’ plan springs into action, and discovers the culprit for all the misplaced and disappearing evidence. It seems there is indeed a mole in the station, one desperate for money for his up and coming wedding. Yep, in a complete shock it seems that Chris has been taking back-handers from an unknown source to misplace evidence. In a scene that shows you just how good the actors are in this show, Marshall Lancaster gives the performance of the week as he slowly breaks down and reveals all to Gene, who sits there stoic in his judgement (and what a steady, measured performance from Phillip Glenister, too) as Chris explains his need for money to impress Shaz. He reveals all about his little jobs here and there, and how the pressure has been building up as the work he has to do from his unknown employer has become darker and much more corrupt. With this confession finally off his shoulders, the team are in a better position to find out what is actually going on, uncovering Rafferty’s rackets (stolen weapons) straight away and blowing apart part of a bigger operation, which is seems may well be ‘Operation Rose’. With the promo for next week it seems that Chris might well be back on the path of redemption as his anonymous paymasters ask him to take part in a big operation, that may lead the team to bigger things and get Alex that little bit closer to going home. Check out our review of episode 6 here.
