Original subtitles

♪ It's alright, it's okay ♪

♪ doesn't really matter if you're old and grey ♪

♪ it's alright, I say, it's okay ♪

♪ listen to what I say ♪

♪ it's alright, doing fine ♪

♪ doesn't really matter if the sun don't shine ♪

♪ it's alright, I say, it's okay ♪

♪ we're getting to the end of the day ♪

- [Water splashes] - [Tense music]

[Bicycle bell trills]

[Crowd chatters]

[Car horn honks]

[Suspenseful music]

[Water splashes]

[Footsteps scuff]

[Door creaks]

[Door slams]

Hello?

[Water drips]

Hello, it's me.

[Dramatic music]

[Bag thuds]

[Woman screams]

[Danny] I use those little bags.

[Steve] What little bags?

Well, you crack the egg into them

and then drop the whole thing

- into boiling water. - No, no, no,

you don't use bags,

you just get the water swirling nicely.

And then you add vinegar.

No, I've tried it,

it just produces favoured egg water.

- Well you're doing it wrong. - Morning.

- Morning guv. - Morning guv.

[Gerry] You all right?

[Danny] Well, clearly I'm doing it wrong,

that's why I use the bags.

Sasha, what method do you use for poaching eggs?

I've no idea, I just point at them on a menu.

What do they want?

You.

Well, I'm pretty sure

that's no longer true of one of them.

I'd give strickland a go though.

Really?

No, Steve, it was a joke.

If I'm not out in 10 minutes,

somebody set off the fire alarm again.

[Door clicks]

Morning Sasha.

- Hello. - Morning.

Dac hancock has something for us.

Oh, good.

Oliver houghton.

The guy they fished out the sewer?

He died two days ago, Sasha, it's not a cold case.

Oh.

I have a team on it, but they're struggling.

Problems at the top?

Oliver houghton was questioned as a potential witness

in an unsolved murder from 20 years ago.

And you think there might be a connection to his death?

[Ned] Honestly? No.

I don't, I think it's a wild goose chase.

But I don't have the manpower to follow it up.

And, uh, well, it's what you guys do, isn't it?

Sure, give it to us,

but it will go at the bottom of a very big pile.

I've said we would accommodate dac hancock.

He doesn't even think there's a connection.

I could be wrong.

I'm sorry, what did you just say?

We're going to help them out with this one.

This is political, isn't it?

[Ned] No, it's called helping out a fellow officer.

Yes, it's completely political.

Fine. Then I want a demarcation, houghton's yours.

This unsolved case?

David straka.

What, the artist?

Yep.

He's ours.

No looking over my shoulder,

no interfering.

Suits me, he's all yours.

Safe to say, I will need updates.

[Rising music]

Okay, here comes the exposition.

David straka was a conceptual artist

living and working in hampstead.

- [Gerry groans] - May the 20th 1994,

David straka was found dead

on the vale of health on hampstead Heath.

Now straka was gay

and he was known to frequent the Heath after dark

to meet people for sex.

Now, the assumption at the time

was that he met the wrong guy.

Cause of death was drowning.

His face was pushed here into this stream.

There were no leads at the time.

And as you know, there's no cctv on the Heath,

and any number of ways off of it.

So what's changed, what do we think we know now?

Well, nothing.

We know now what we knew then,

except Oliver houghton.

Wasn't that the bloke who was found dead in the sewer?

Well, that's a juicy one.

It's not our juicy one, I'm afraid.

The team leading the houghton investigation

aren't making much progress.

There's no motives, he had no known enemies.

Wasn't he a film critic?

Oh, well, there you go. Next.

What he was, Gerry,

was a witness in the original David straka investigation.

That a fact?

Yeah, Oliver houghton worked

as an assistant for David straka.

[Danny] Were they romantically involved?

Good question. Don't know.

Oh, right, so we're looking for a connection

between this bloke straka,

drowned on the Heath by somebody he'd picked up there,

and a film critic who ends up dead in a sewer

20 years later.

Now with all due respect guvnor,

there are three seasoned cops here who'll tell you

there's bugger all in this.

[Steve] Yeah.

[Danny] Two.

Eh?

Two.

This seasoned cop has just spotted something interesting.

[Tense music]

This is pretty much the exact spot

where David straka was killed.

And I think the method is a clue.

Go on.

Straka was drowned.

Well, he wasn't beaten, nor strangled,

which is how a lot of these situations end up

when they go badly.

He was drowned.

We knew all this when we were drinking tea

in a nice warm office.

Who's heard of the river fleet?

I have.

Put your hand up, don't just call out.

It's an underground river.

Yes, it was the biggest of London's lost rivers.

It was a proper waterway with boots and trade and whatnot.

Got pretty mucky though,

basically filled up with sewage, dead dogs,

and the occasional victim of violent crime.

The whole thing got so unpleasant that

by the middle of the 19th century

it'd either been built over gradually

or redirected underground.

But it's still there, it's still flowing,

but it's under the city now.

I knew that. Except for the dead dogs.

Well, the fleet has two sources,

one is over that way in the ground of kenwood house,

and the other is here.

Here?

Here.

This is the source.

The river flows down that way, through hampstead ponds,

and then down to Camden, kings cross, clerkenwell,

flows into the thames underneath blackfriars bridge.

For most of its length it's a sewer now.

Would this be the same sewer

that Oliver houghton's body was found in?

- Yes. - Yeah,

but couldn't that just be coincidence?

Both victims were drowned, in the same river.

And where houghton was found is not easy to get to,

somebody really wanted his body to end up there.

[Doorbell rings]

[Entry system buzzes]

So this was David straka's studio?

That's right, and it's now the archive.

I'm putting a book together on his entire body of work.

I'm not sure it helps

that you're dragging up his death again.

But I suppose this is because of poor Ollie houghton,

I was just reading about it.

Would you like coffee?

It's only instant.

[Steve] No, thanks, no.

You think that the one death

has something to do with the other?

We're looking at all the possibilities at the moment.

[Steve] You wrote a biography of David straka,

how did you feel about the official version of his death?

Was he killed by some bugger, you mean?

Yes, that more than rang true, I'm afraid.

Liked a bit of rough, did David, the rougher the better.

You knew him well, when he was alive?

Oh, very well, yes.

We dined together every Friday, the whole salon.

Your whole what?

A gathering of the artistically inclined.

David's inner circle, if you will.

[Steve] Do you have a list of names?

I'm afraid most of them are dead now.

Cancer, aids, a couple of them decamped to warmer climes.

While David was still alive, you understand,

nothing sinister. [Chuckles]

Just Ruth and cyril remain,

and I haven't seen them for years.

[Steve] Ruth and cyril?

Ruth shireen and cyril Watkins.

Characters, both of them.

But I suppose we all were back then,

at least viewed through the prism of the normal.

[Steve] Do you have contact details for either of them?

[Sam] I'm afraid not.

Lost to the mists of time.

What's this?

[Tense music]

Oh.

That's from an unfinished project.

And what was it?

Oh nothing, a minor piece at best.

It's just a still from a moving image piece.

Found footage retrieved, reassembled, and re-contextualized.

Minor, as I say.

Now, if you're interested in some of David's-

I'm interested in this.

It's just some cheap homemade film clips

David had happened upon.

And where did he happen upon them?

I've no idea.

[Danny] And he was working on this when he died?

That's right, yes.

I'm afraid I fail to see why you should-

does it tie in with the fleet river at all?

The underground river, you mean?

I don't think...

Well, I wouldn't have thought...

He most certainly never mentioned it.

And what happened to these clips?

Well, nothing.

The plan was to reassemble them

and build some sort of performance piece around them.

But he never managed to track down all the clips.

[Steve] What about the ones he did find?

Well, I'm sure they're around somewhere.

There are much more interesting pieces-

we'd like to have a look at them.

[Dramatic music]

Danny, when you said arty '70s home movie,

this isn't exactly what I was hoping to see.

Yeah, what was that?

There's a lot of words to describe what that was,

but useful and evidence aren't among them.

[Gerry grunts]

So why was macfarlane so keen to dismiss them?

I think there's more to it.

Do you wanna run with these clips for a bit?

- Yeah. - Okay.

Gerry, you and I are going to see Emily Fraser.

Who's Emily Fraser?

[Sasha] She was another one of straka's assistants.

She worked with Oliver houghton.

How many assistants does a conceptual artist need?

Two, apparently.

[Steve] What about me?

You're on secondment

to Danny mulder's spooky woo-woo apartment.

- What? - Woo.

Oh for...

[Serene music]

[Gerry] Do you like art?

[Sasha] Is that an actual question?

It's like asking somebody if they read books.

I don't know much about art, but I like it,

yeah, course I like it.

Nah, it's not for me.

I mean, you explain to me the difference between that

and what a child would paint.

Are you waiting for me?

[Sasha] Emily Fraser?

Yes.

[Sasha] Detective chief inspector Sasha Miller,

this is Gerry standing.

Has something happened?

[Sasha] No, no. Well, yes, 20 years ago.

We're here about David straka.

Oh, sorry, they just told me the police were here.

My dad's ill, he lives with me and I thought-

no, no, no, nothing like that.

[Sasha] Um, is there somewhere we can talk?

Yes. Yes, I have an office upstairs.

That Francis bacon you were looking at,

it's, um, considered a landmark in British postwar art.

Ah, right.

Doesn't mean you'd want it

hanging on your living room wall though, huh? [Chuckles]

I don't get it, I'm afraid.

Well, I could give you a two hour lecture

on bacon's contribution to British surrealism

post Paul Nash and Graham sutherland,

and the influence of the works of aeschylus

and Picasso's biomos on those three paintings,

or you could just treat art the same as books,

or film, or music.

You like, what you like

and bollocks to anyone who says you're wrong.

[Sasha and Emily chuckle]

[Gerry chuckles]

[Door latch clicks]

Come in.

You worked with David straka?

Yeah, as an assistant

for a few months after I left university.

Really? And what sort of thing did that involve?

Well, whatever needed doing really,

arranging models for him to paint or photograph,

finding locations, dealing with galleries and exhibitions.

Sometimes it'd be just tidying up the studio

or collecting his dry cleaning.

The project he was working on when he died.

[Emily] The film thing.

What, you didn't approve?

Well, it wasn't for me to approve, really, I just...

I went to work with David

because I thought his work was amazing.

But that last project, it just didn't sit right for me.

It was all to do with spiritualism,

and I just found it all a bit adolescent, if I'm honest.

What about his private life?

Oh, we never, um.

No, I mean, did you ever get an insight

into what his life was like outside the studio?

Well, he picked up men on hampstead Heath, didn't he?

That's how he died.

Wasn't exactly a rare phenomenon in that world.

[Sasha] Were he and Oliver houghton ever lovers?

Ollie? God no.

No, Ollie was definitely straight.

He's a good person to talk to though,

knew more about David's private life than I did.

Probably don't have an up-to-date number for him now,

it's a long time since-

[Gerry] Um.

What?

[Sasha] You don't know about Oliver houghton, do you?

[Gerry] He was murdered two days ago.

[Sasha] It was in the papers, we assumed you knew.

No, I, I didn't.

But you said you were here about David straka.

We are, it's a tangential investigation.

Because Oliver houghton was

a witness in the David straka case we've been asked to see

if there's a connection to his death.

But David was killed by some guy in the Heath,

how can that connect to Ollie being killed

two decades later?

We don't really know if it does.

[Sasha] I think we've got everything we need.

Well, if you do need more information about David,

you should probably talk to Ruth shireen.

Yeah, I think Sam macfarlane mentioned her.

You've spoken to Sam macfarlane?

Well, he's straka's biographer.

Biographer's a bit strong.

He was one of those obsessive fans

who hangs around long enough

they become part of the furniture.

Ruth's more of an artist in her own right.

Very much influenced by David's work.

She's more of an insider.

If you do go and see her, have a look at her work,

might be more your thing.

Thanks for your time, miss Fraser.

[Dramatic music]

In 1865 Thomas Hardy, the novelist,

was working as a trainee architect.

He was overseeing the removal of bodies

from part of this churchyard,

because they were about to build

the midland railway line through it.

And rather than smashing up the headstones,

Hardy stacked them around this tree.

How do you know all this stuff?

They write it in books.

But you know what's more interesting?

I can't imagine.

This churchyard used to be on the bank of a river.

The fleet?

That is interesting.

[Suspenseful music]

Go on then.

Bagnigge house was actually the home of Nell gwynne,

except it wasn't here, it was up the road,

but they moved that plaque there

to the site of what were the bagnigge Wells.

There was a spa here in the late 1700s.

Well, I say spa, it was more of a knocking shop,

but it's the Wells that are interesting.

Very.

What, so all this water came from the fleet?

Mm, yes here, and St. Chad's well,

the clerk's well, or clerkenwell,

were all situated on the banks of the fleet.

All right, all right,

if I admit there's a pattern to these clips, can we go home?

No.

[Ruth] Yeah, that whole scene

got very weird towards the end.

I mean, it was kind of weird already,

very much a cult of personality,

David straka being the great Messiah of contemporary art.

[Sasha] You didn't rate him?

Oh no, he was brilliant.

That's one of the reasons I was there.

He was a guest lecturer

my last year at goldsmiths, amazing man,

if the work had been allowed to stand up for itself.

But there was all the media interests

and the cool britannia bullshit,

and it distracted him I think,

probably went to his head.

And it meant there was this coterie

of hangers-on all the time.

What, like Sam macfarlane?

Sam, yeah. Yeah.

Oh god. That attention is just too distracting.

Hmm, that's nice.

Oh, thank you.

It's, um, part of a series I'm working on

based on the protestant work ethic

and how it's been corrupted by the media

and systematically taken advantage of

by the politico-financial cabals.

Yeah, I like the fruity bits.

Speaking of distracted.

Yeah, David, I think he just started

to believe in all the hype, and,

and it affected the quality of his work towards the end.

You mean the film clips piece?

Oh yeah, that project was a load of rubbish.

You know, those clips David found

were just bad, pretentious, homemade nonsense.

But David believed he could see something in them

and kind of decided these clips

held some sort of occult significance,

that they were magical key or something.

If it all turned so bad, why did you hang around?

Well, because I was shagging Ollie houghton.

That didn't last long though,

he got involved in all the nonsense as well

and he started reading

all this stuff about aleister crowley,

and the hermetic order of the golden dawn,

and him and straka started to go

to these get-togethers held by crackpots

in rooms above pubs.

Ollie even got me to try some sex magic with him.

Turns out that's messy and not to be recommended.

Anyway, this was all because of cyril Watkins, of course.

That name's come up before.

Yeah, really nasty piece of work,

Sam introduced him to the group.

Sam macfarlane?

Mm, Sam was up to his eyes and all that rubbish.

Him and Watkins belonged to some sort of, um,

occult pagan secret society thing,

you know, all rolled up trouser legs and dodgy handshakes.

But I mean, cyril was properly, properly dark.

Which made him exactly David's type.

What, they were having a relationship?

Watkins and straka?

Oof, yeah, yeah, yeah. Really, really intense.

Do you think Watkins was capable of murder?

That's a big question.

I wouldn't wanna say that about anyone,

I mean, I was out of the group before David died,

so I really don't know what happened,

but when I heard about Ollie,

my mind immediately did leap back there.

Why?

Well, because of that river, the fleet.

They never shut up about it.

The mystical fleet, the artery of old London.

And they did both...

Well, they did both die in it.

[Tense music]

[Danny] This was the course of the fleet.

It wound down through packenham street, Phoenix place,

and through here.

So is this, this street rising up,

is that like the, the riverbank?

[Danny] Yeah, exactly.

Herbal hill, over there, got its name because they used-

[Steve] Because they grew herbs there?

Yeah. There's vine street, saffron hill.

But we're here for this.

[Steve] Please don't tell me

you recognise this particular grate.

Well, of course not, that would be ridiculous.

But if this film is about the fleet,

then that grate is pretty well known.

You hear that?

[Rushing water rumbles]

[Steve] Is that it?

It's the fleet.

The city has grown up over it, but it's still down there.

So, you've got the vale of health,

and then kings cross, clerkenwell,

and on down to blackfriars.

Now where we're standing in fact, holburn,

that literally means old bourn, or old stream,

because sir Christopher wren-

wait a minute, wait a minute.

So, if each of these clips references

part of the fleet's course, what if we reordered them?

Into the order that the river flows, you mean?

Yeah.

Well, that would change the narrative and probably make...

Oh.

What?

I think I know what this is.

[Doorbell rings]

[Doorbell rings]

[Door clatters]

- Oh, thanks. - [High heels click]

Eyes front, Gerry.

- [Film projector whirs] - [Tense music]

Mr. Macfarlane?

[Door bangs]

Mr. Macfarlane?

[Tense music intensifies]

He's in a coma, blunt-force trauma.

[Ned] What did he give you that's so important?

All he gave us were the film clips,

Dan and Steve said he didn't seem keen to hand them over.

And is there anything on them?

Boss, the film clips are the key.

Apparently so.

If you put them in the right order.

Here's the fleet river, as was.

Now, David straka was killed up here,

and Oliver houghton's body was found here,

now this much we knew.

But then we come to the film clips

that David straka was collecting.

Now, Steve and I have been out all day.

Which was fun.

And we think we've identified exactly where it was filmed.

There were shots on each clip

that allowed us to formally identify it all.

Uh, for example, this is the Hardy tree.

[Robert] The what?

[Steve] Oh, please don't.

Placing the clips by location

allows us to put them in order.

Now viewed individually they're nonsense.

But if we sequence them with the flow of the river,

then a narrative starts to emerge.

Uh, as you can see, it's heavy with symbolism,

lots of flowing water,

which ties it in with the fleet river,

so it's all about flow.

[Sasha] Is that a knife going in there?

Yes it is.

We think it's some kind of sacrificial dagger.

Right, so the knife goes in at the beginning,

and then in the last clip the knife goes in again.

But this time it's...

[Robert] It's got blood on it.

In the beginning, the blade is cleansed

by the flowing water of the river.

You saw something burning there as well.

That was sage, which lots of cultures use

as part of a cleansing ritual.

Hang on, what are you saying?

I'm saying that we could be looking at footage,

albeit incomplete, of a human sacrifice.

In the 1970s?

- Yes. - In London?

- Yes. - Bollocks.

Hold on a second, ned.

What, do you think houghton was killed

by, by what, wizards?

This isn't about Oliver houghton,

you asked us to look into David's straka's death,

and this is what we've found.

Houghton thought it was a sacrifice too.

Excuse me.

Oliver houghton, he wrote about these film clips.

Houghton's not your case,

how've you got access to his writing?

'Cause he published it on his blog.

Don't tell me your guys didn't read his blog.

What did it say, Steve?

- Well, Sasha. - Hmm.

We know houghton was obsessed with these clips, right?

I mean, there's a bit of a buzz about them online,

were they a hoax, where the missing bits were,

stuff like that.

But, look, houghton was considered to be a real expert,

and he believed the complete film

shows a real human sacrifice.

Had he seen the complete film?

No, from what we've been able to gather

on the online forums, no-one has.

So we don't actually know what it shows.

We don't.

So it might not be a snuff move,

it might just be some sort of avant-garde porno.

What's that?

[Steve] That's from the clerkenwell clip.

It's an occult symbol, a sigil.

We don't know what it means yet.

Right.

Why? What is it?

Ned?

Well, it's in the houghton post-mortem report,

Oliver houghton had that symbol branded onto his arm.

Branded?

He really was taking these clips seriously.

[Robert] Well, did straka have one of those?

[Steve] Well, I never saw any mention of it.

Here.

[Footsteps thud]

Yeah, I remember it.

You didn't mention anything of this nature before.

No. Oh, please sit down.

Thank you.

Um, no, well I'm sure I mentioned

that David's last project had shades of spiritualism.

I guess I found it all a bit embarrassing really.

[Steve] How was that?

Well, because it's silly, isn't it?

All this occult stuff.

But David straka believed in it?

I suppose so, yeah.

And Oliver houghton?

Yeah, but you can't...

You don't think that this had anything to do with-

we don't know, Emily, but we're finding

that some people seem to take these clips very seriously.

Sam macfarlane's in a coma.

He was attacked after he gave some of these clips to us.

- Sam? - And Oliver houghton

was heavily involved in online forums that discuss them.

Have you any idea what this symbol means?

Yeah, it's, uh, it's the symbol

for some sort of occult club.

It dates back to the '60s or something.

Did you know that Oliver houghton

had it branded on his arm?

Oh.

Oh Ollie.

You don't seem surprised.

Well, Ollie was always

searching for something to cling to.

Hmm, branding's a bit extreme.

Straka didn't have one did he?

Cyril Watkins had the brand.

I only met him a few times, um,

I really did try to keep my distance from all this stuff,

but he had the brand.

Um, I asked him about it because, well, who wouldn't?

And he said that the pain

was a vital part of the experience.

Sounds like fun.

He really wasn't.

He was a dreadful influence on David, and Ollie.

Is this him?

Yeah, that's him.

He'd be older now, when was this taken?

We don't know, we got it online.

It's the only image we could find of cyril Watkins.

Was he in a relationship with David straka?

Well, it depends on your definition of relationship.

They were definite...

- Dad? - Haircut.

Where you going dad?

No, you had a haircut Monday.

Sorry about this.

Dad?

[Edward] This door's jammed.

[Emily] No, it's not.

Dad, dad, you don't need to go anywhere.

It looks nice, your hair looks nice, come on.

Who's this?

It's just some friends that have popped round.

Steve, hello.

Hi, I'm Sasha.

[Edward] I know you.

[Emily] I don't think you do, dad.

I'd recognise Alice anywhere, it's lovely Alice.

No, it's not mum.

Mum's not with us anymore dad, remember?

Listen, you take your coat off.

I'll bring you up some tea and biscuits in a bit, yeah?

Sorry.

Um...

Oh, cyril Watkins.

Ah, yeah. Yeah, he and David were in a relationship.

The exact nature of it's anyone's guess,

but all this occult stuff came from cyril Watkins.

And Sam macfarlane.

Poor Sam.

You don't think that cyril Watkins could have...

Well, we're certainly pretty keen to talk to him.

- [Traffic rumbles] - [Siren wails]

Good evening, ladies and gentlemen,

I can tell by my watch that it is that time again,

so let's get started, shall we?

Uh, a bit of housekeeping before we start.

You'll notice there are some flyers

on all of the tables,

and Patrick from the north London chaos society

has asked me to point out

that there is a misprint on theirs.

When it says "every Tuesday,"

it's, it's actually every Thursday.

And also David from the lost river explorer society

sends his apologies,

he was due to give a short presentation

on what the lres

-is up to this month -I'm not seeing him, are you?

But he unfortunately is double booked tonight.

But, on the plus side that does give us more time

for our main speaker tonight,

and I can see she has already raring to go.

That's the woman from the straka studio.

[Sasha] Are you sure?

[Gerry] Absolutely.

[Women chatter]

Excuse me, excuse me.

Sorry, excuse us.

[Sasha] Excuse me!

Oi!

Right, get the car, cut her off.

- [Train clatters] - [Tense music]

[Fist thuds]

- [Fist thuds] - [Cecily grunts]

[Cecily yelps]

[Gerry] Cyril Watkins?

It's cecily now.

You were David straka's lover at the time he died.

You got him and his circle

into some fairly weird occult stuff,

tied in to a series of film clips and the fleet river.

No-one in straka's circle

seems to have a very high opinion of you.

[Cecily scoffs]

And then there's Sam macfarlane,

who was also assisting us with our inquiries

and had provided us with copies of those clips.

He's in a coma now.

If he doesn't wake up, you're looking at a murder charge.

All you can do now is hope to make things

a little bit better for yourself by talking to us.

You can start by explaining that.

It's just a burn.

No, it's not.

It's this.

It's a sigil.

You have no idea what you're dealing with, do you?

What we're dealing with is murder,

whatever the justification.

Whether it's cause your dog told you to do it,

god told you to do it,

or you did it because you think you're Gandalf,

it all boils down to the same thing.

I didn't kill anyone.

Well then you're going to need

to start cooperating with us,

because right now you're the prime suspect.

If we carry on down this road, there's very little

of your personal history or winning personality

that's going to convince any jury that we were wrong.

The film shows a woman dying.

Have you seen it?

[Cecily] Not that part, no. No-one has.

Then how do you know-

because I am sufficiently well versed

in occult lore and chaos magic to be able to read the signs.

Who's the victim?

I don't know.

All right.

How did David straka come into possession of these clips?

He bought them.

From who?

In the late '60s, early '70s there was an occult group,

they called themselves the order of the nicors.

The nicors were Saxon water spirits

and the order concerned itself

with the mystical properties of the lost rivers of London.

They used the sigil that you've seen.

And your group nicked it off of them.

We were inspired by them.

Oh, like a tribute band.

One of the order made that film.

Somehow fragments of it surfaced.

David straka bought all the ones we could find,

but they came from different people

and the provenance could never be traced.

So you're claiming that this film was some kind of ritual.

- Hm. - What kind of ritual?

Human sacrifice?

[Scoffs] We don't do human sacrifices.

Chaos magic is all about accessing

the meta-programming of the subconscious mind.

Physical rituals trigger changes in reality,

or the perception of reality as experienced by the magician.

Ah, oh, that's cleared that up.

We don't hurt people.

No?

Well, we've got two dead bodies and a man in a coma

that says otherwise.

The ritual in the film was a bloodletting.

A woman's blood was offered up

to the spirit of the fleet river.

[Sasha] For what purpose?

- That I don't know. - [Sasha groans]

But I do know the effect it had.

Which was?

She died, the woman.

Oh, it was an accident,

probably she or the person making the film

nicked an artery by mistake.

Too much blood flowed into the river,

her life was given up to it,

and the spirit of the river was awoken.

I'm sorry?

The fleet is an ancient part of London,

it predates the city itself.

It's an artery flowing into mother thames.

It's a river. It's water flowing downhill.

It's awake now.

The spirit of the river was woken by blood,

and blood is what it craves.

Why do you think they sent the river underground?

It attracted violence.

It's water was choked with dead animals, dead people.

So they covered it over and it went to sleep.

But then this happened.

Look at the crime statistics.

Look at the rise in violence and murder

along the course of the fleet

in the years since this woman gave her life to it.

Cecily, nothing you're telling me here

is making me any less certain

that you were involved in these murders.

There's another clip out there,

shows the victim of the sacrifice.

[Sasha] Have you seen it?

No.

- Oh, for god's sake. - But David straka saw it

on the day he died.

Shows a woman on a bridge.

What bridge?

I don't know.

Look, I'm getting this from a note he left me.

It said he'd found a new clip

and it showed a woman on a bridge.

But by the time I got the note, he was already dead.

So what happened to this mysterious clip?

Well it wasn't anywhere in the house.

When I went to the studio

where all the other clips were kept,

it wasn't there either.

So, the only evidence we've got

that there is another clip, or that David straka saw it-

Oliver houghton saw it too.

He told me afterwards, he watched it with David that day.

So you're suggesting that Oliver houghton and David straka

were killed because they saw the woman in this clip?

Well, if they could have identified the woman

it would have led them to whoever it was who made the clips.

But why did whoever it was

wait 20 years before murdering houghton?

I don't know.

It's a fun theory, cecily,

but it's all a bit difficult to prove

if the only people who can support it are dead.

Emily's not dead.

[Gerry] Emily Fraser?

She was in the studio that day.

She never liked me.

She wouldn't talk to me at all after David died.

But if David screened that tape in his studio for Ollie,

Emily saw it too.

[Gerry sighs]

[Papers rustle]

I didn't see it.

Well, do you remember

David straka screening this clip for Oliver houghton?

No.

Did you get this from cyril Watkins?

It's cecily now.

- Is it? - Yeah.

Well, he...

She is mistaken.

She seems to think that David straka and Oliver houghton

were killed because they saw the victim,

the face of the victim, in this clip.

- Victim? - It's possible

the film shows the death of a woman,

an occult ritual that went badly wrong.

And you believe this?

[Sasha] We have to look into it.

It's nonsense, all this stuff was always nonsense.

I didn't see a clip, and I don't remember him screening one.

Emily, I understand

that this might seem a little far-fetched,

but if you did see the clip but you're scared

because you think it might put you in danger-

I'm not scared, I'm late for a lecture.

Sorry, I've got to go.

Look, you've got cyril Watkins, cecily, whatever,

that's who killed David straka,

probably Oliver houghton too.

We've no evidence to support that theory.

That's not my fault.

Sorry, I've got to go.

That's a bit out of character, don't you think?

Maybe she just doesn't like being late.

She's not late.

She's an hour early.

[Ned] You are joking.

[Sasha] Houghton was a writer, he must've kept notebooks.

Tonnes of them, shelves and shelves, literally.

Yeah, so somewhere in there, must be something-

houghton's not your case, Sasha.

No, I know, but say he saw

the missing clip and he wrote about it.

You know, that could be a massive break in the straka case.

You're only looking at the straka case

because it relates to houghton.

- [Sasha groans] - I'm not handing

my team's evidence over to ucos.

That's the organ grinder giving

to the monkey.

It's what?

You know what I mean.

Yeah, I know exactly what you mean.

And I know exactly what this has all been about

- from the off. - Sasha-

no, this is about you controlling me.

It's about you abusing your seniority to get exactly-

I'm not the one

who brings our personal life to work.

We don't have a personal life.

I am not the one who speaks to you like-

like what?

You know how you speak to me in front of people.

You undermine me.

- Oh grow up! - There you go.

Oh, well what? There's no-one here.

Okay. You're right, I'm sorry.

I shouldn't do that.

I'm not asking you to call me sir.

Too bloody right you're not.

To crack this case I really need

to have access to houghton's notebooks.

Look, if there was any other way,

you know I hate coming to you.

You don't have to hate it.

I really need this, ned.

I'm sorry I undermine you.

I'll try and keep a lid on it in future.

Please.

I'll see what I can do.

Thank you.

Okay, I've spoken to ned hancock

and I think he's going to let us...

What're you working on?

Houghton's notebooks.

I requested them first thing,

ned send them around a couple of hours ago.

Bastard.

Nevermind, what have we got?

Uh, well, I've got a few references,

but nothing much to go on.

The first is about the face on the bridge clip.

Hold on, hold on,

why do you keep talking about a bridge?

I mean if the fleet is all covered over

and flowing underground, how can there be a bridge?

Holburn viaduct?

And there's something about the woman on the bridge,

but there's not much to go on here

it just says blonde, early 20s, all pretty vague.

Oh, there is one thing that's quite interesting.

This is an entry dated about eight months ago.

Now, houghton had been on one of those online forums,

you know, where they discuss the clips.

Now I went onto the forum myself,

but the exchange he refers to has been taken down.

Now it could have been archived because it was old, or-

what does it say, Dan?

Someone was claiming to know

where the blood sacrifice took place.

And?

[Danny] Ludgate.

[Steve] If I was going to perform a human sacrifice,

I'd be looking for somewhere a wee bit quieter than this.

[Danny] But you'd be hard pressed to find somewhere

with greater psycho-geographical significance, though.

[Gerry] Easy for him to say.

You see, ludgate

was one of the original gates through the London wall.

It was on the banks of the fleet.

And there's a strong argument that says

that the name is actually a bastardization

of flood gate, or even fleet gate.

Now, the fleet was wide here,

there were docks, loading stations, you name it.

There was a bridge that joined fleet street

to ludgate hill, here.

And then bridewell prison was down that way.

That was on the banks of the fleet too.

And fleet prison was down there.

[Gerry] So?

So, this was an area

where a lot of people suffered and died.

In occult terms, that makes it

a pretty potent place for a ritual.

Yeah, but come on,

where here could you film yourself cutting somebody up

and dribbling their blood all over the place?

Well, any of these buildings,

if they were empty in the early '70s.

That's no use to us, be no evidence left.

You said the fleet was wide here, Dan?

Yes.

So presumably at this stage in its course

it's now a sewer?

Yes, a big one.

Flowing right beneath us, through this area

of immense psycho-geographical significance?

Yes.

No.

You're not thinking...

[Guide] Welcome to the fleet.

[Danny] Wow.

[Guide] So whereabouts do you wanna be?

Uh, I've lost my bearings, um.

That way's north?

[Guide] Yep.

[Danny] So, ludgate is that way?

[Sasha] This is amazing.

[Gerry] It's a sewer.

[Sasha] Oh, come on,

how often do you get to come to places like this?

[Steve] We're cops, Sasha,

we spend half our lives knee-deep in shit.

[Sasha] You're no fun, that's your problem.

[Danny] That's very much their problem.

[Gerry] Look, what are we expecting

to find down here anyway?

Giant alligators.

Places that you can't access from the street.

There are basements with manhole covers

that lead down to the fleet.

[Danny] And some of the buildings destroyed in the blitz

had basements that were permanently sealed off

when they were rebuilt.

Basements that can only be accessed from down here.

[Guide] This is about where ludgate is.

[Sasha] What about these side tunnels?

[Guide] Maintenance access, some are for runoff.

Right, let's split up.

[Steve] There speaks a woman

who's never seen a horror film.

Dan, you're with me.

[Guide] I'll be waiting right here for you.

- [Gerry groans] - Come on, Gerry,

you'll be all right, stick with me.

I mean, I know it's unprofessional,

but I'm not a robot am I?

You're not a robot.

I mean, I can't just see him, that man that betrayed me,

this man that tore my family apart,

I can't just see him in the office

and just see a fellow police officer, can I?

Wouldn't be normal, would it?

And I mean, I know it makes people

feel uncomfortable and slightly awkward,

but how do you think I feel when I walk

-into the office and- -shh.

What?

Nothing.

Just, shh.

[Gerry] They should have given us

protective clothing for this.

As soon as I get out, I'm burning all my gear.

[Steve] You're gonna burn all your clothes?

[Gerry] Well, maybe got burn, no,

but get it super-cleaned over and over,

just to get rid of the smell.

[Steve] It isn't even halfway up your boots, Gerry.

[Gerry] And there's the gas.

You know, they got pockets of methane,

or whatever it is down here,

and one little spark and, boom.

[Steve] Yeah, and mutant creatures,

you know, rats the size of dogs, apparently.

[Gerry] Yeah, all right, all right, you can take the piss,

but I'm not used to these sort of conditions.

[Steve] Oh, and I am, am I?

[Gerry] Well I've been up to your neck of the woods, yeah.

That's where I remember the smell from. [Yelps]

Gerry, be careful.

What's that?

It's an alligator, I think.

It's not an aligator, you dope, it's a trapdoor.

- [Door thuds] - [Tense music]

[Ladder clangs]

Shit.

[Dramatic music]

[Rats squeal]

Oh no.

Right, everyone back down the ladder,

this is now a crime scene.

Right, thanks.

Well, nothing's set in stone, but initial findings suggest

our body's a women in her early 20s.

Rate of decomposition indicates

she's been dead about 40 years.

So, what do we reckon?

It's her.

Okay, so we're assuming that these film clips

do in fact depict some kind of ritual bloodletting

that went wrong.

And this woman, whoever she is, was the victim.

Now, according to cecily Watkins,

David straka saw a clip of this woman on the day he died

standing on a bridge.

That clip vanished from his studio on the same day.

If David straka was killed

because he could identify the woman in this clip,

that would explain why Oliver houghton was killed as well,

because he also saw the clip.

But it doesn't explain

why it took the killer 20 years to get round to him.

Maybe it wasn't the same killer.

Well, if this occult group were involved,

maybe it's two different members of the same set.

This isn't your case.

Sasha, this body that's just been found, it's a new case.

It's not unsolved, and it's not open,

but it directly relates to the houghton murder,

which puts it firmly within the purview of my team.

Why don't you piss off

back under your slimy adulterous little rock, ned.

[Robert] Sasha.

This is about houghton notebooks, isn't it?

Do you think?

I think we'll take this somewhere more private.

Now.

This is exactly what I'm talking about.

You're bringing our private problems into the office.

This is plainly not a ucos case,

and insulting me in public isn't gonna make it one.

It is a ucos case, ned.

Excuse me.

The discovery of this new body comes as a direct result

of the ucos team's investigation

into the murder of David straka.

An investigation undertaken

as an adjunct to the houghton case.

Which your team got precisely nowhere with.

If it wasn't for Dan gryphon and Steve mcandrew

your team wouldn't have even read houghton's blog,

let alone his notebooks.

-The point is- -ucos has done the legwork,

they found the body,

they have a workable theory.

I've already had a conversation

with the assistant commissioner,

we're running with this one, ned.

These moments are not forgotten, Robert.

If I ever hear you speak

to a deputy assistant commissioner like that again,

you'll be out of here so fast

your feet won't touch the ground.

Okay, so it's the 20 year gap

between the murder of David straka

and the murder of Oliver houghton that's bothering me.

Yeah, but houghton wasn't exactly in hiding,

wouldn't have taken that long to find him.

If both these guys were killed

because they saw this film clip,

how come Emily Fraser's still walking around?

Well, we don't know that she saw it.

She got pretty defensive when we asked her about it.

- Yeah. - Well, if houghton was

a member of this occult group, maybe they had a falling out.

He could've been on side for 20 years

and then decided to turn against them.

Anything in his writing to support that?

-Well not so far- -the writing

has to be the key.

Houghton wrote everything down, right,

so somewhere recently he saw or did something

that made him a target.

And it must've been in his stuff somewhere.

- Yeah. - Oh my god.

- What? - It's her.

What's her?

It has to be her.

Houghton saw the clip 20 years ago,

but it was only recently

that he was able to identify the victim.

How?

Well I finally got a copy of houghton's hard drive.

Now when he died, he was working on a piece

about underground British filmmakers in the '60s and '70s.

A must-read.

And there were some clips attached to the folder, here.

Now, if he recognised our victim from one of these films...

Yeah, but which one?

20 years, and he finally thinks he's seen the same woman.

He must've watched that clip over and over again.

Then it's this one.

Go back to the beginning, spool it back.

What?

Play it again.

Pause it.

Can you make it bigger?

That's right.

On her arm.

It's definitely her.

She was a member of the original group.

The order of the nicors.

So she was party to what happened to her.

She was prepared to have her blood taken.

Presumably she didn't know how it would end up,

but she was in that world.

We need a name.

Just checking to see if there's a cast list online.

What you looking at, Danny?

I think it's the same guy.

Same as what?

That made both films.

Look, look there.

Look at the framing, there and there.

And look, there's a slight scratch on the lens,

it's all too similar.

Guv, her name's Alice, Alice unsworth.

I've cross-checked and this film's her only credit.

And there's no record of her after 1972.

And she was never reported missing?

Nope.

Who directed the film, Steve?

[Tense music]

Oh, you are kidding.

[Carer] Edward, got some visitors.

[Man on TV] Second number four, breezy day, 11 to two.

Hello, Mr. Fraser. Do you remember me?

Oh yes, lovely Alice.

Hello Mr. Fraser, remember me too?

Steve, we met the other day.

How you doing, okay?

Good, man.

My name's Gerry,

now we understand you used to make films.

Oh yes, very good films.

Yes, long time ago now.

Do you still have any? We'd love to see them.

[Edward] Oh, they're proper films, you know?

I mean, none of your video nonsense.

No, course not.

Do you have a projector for them?

Oh yes, yes, very good Nick it is, too.

Yes, I used to be a projectionist.

Leicester square, 40 years.

[Danny] Can I give you a hand setting it up?

Oh yes.

Oh, there's one here about otters.

That's a nice film.

Yeah, very, very hard to get close to,

you know, you have to win their trust.

[Mellow music]

I'd like to see this one.

[Film projector whirs]

Alice.

Lovely Alice.

I always thought she'd been killed

in an accident when I was a toddler.

I don't really have any memory of her,

it was always just dad and me.

I'd seen the symbol that David was painting,

and the brand on cyril Watkins' arm,

and I knew they were the same thing that dad had,

but it didn't make any sense to me.

I didn't want it to.

And then David showed us the film.

And I saw her, saw mum on that bridge.

And then I knew what it meant.

I knew what dad had done.

You didn't kill David straka, did you?

I confronted dad.

I told him what I'd seen.

He tried to make me understand.

He and mum, they were young, and they were into drugs,

and magic, and they just somehow got caught up in it all.

And it was an accident,

she, she, she wasn't supposed to die.

And if he confessed, I would've been taken away,

put into care.

We had this big fight and he stormed out,

and then I went to work the next day

and they told me that David had been killed,

and the film clip was missing.

And I knew.

But I just wanted everything to go back to the way it was.

[Man on TV] And with encouragement-

dad.

What? Oh, sorry love.

Look at him.

He doesn't remember.

He doesn't know what he's done, he...

Mum, David he's...

He hasn't known for years.

So, Oliver houghton was in touch with you recently, yeah?

He called out of the blue,

and said he had this film that dad had made.

Could he come and talk to us about it?

He said it was for a piece he was writing.

Something in his tone,

I just knew he'd figured it all out.

But this time you had to deal with it.

Who else?

He either wanted money that I didn't have,

or he was going to go public with it somehow.

So he would have taken dad away,

and he wouldn't have even understood why.

Dad.

Hmm?

I love you, dad.

I'm sorry.

It's all coming apart. [Sobs]

It's the river,

it still wants more.

I think we should get you both down to the station.

Come on, Mr. Fraser.

Where's Emily gone?

Get after her.

Get the carer back down here.

Emily!

[Sasha] No, it's all right, she's not here.

Oh, yes.

I, I suppose she's just popped out for something.

[Mellow music]

[Emily sobs]

[Gerry] She could be anywhere round here.

[Steve] Tell me about it.

[Rising music]

[Steve] Yeah hi, yeah, uh, she's disappeared,

we think she's gone east.

They've lost her, where's she going?

Well that's anybody's guess.

No, it's our guess.

What did she say at the end?

She said the river wants more.

Shit.

[Water splashes]

[Emily pants]

Emily.

It's all right.

Emily, Emily, step back, towards me.

It still wants blood.

It wants more blood.

Every last drop.

It's not real, Emily.

The fleet's not there anymore.

This will end it.

[Sasha] No.

I want to see her again.

No.

No, Emily!

- [Body thuds] - [Tyres squeal]

[Car horns blare]

[Water splashes]

Well, this means we've got absolutely nothing

on Edward Fraser.

I mean if he really can't remember anything from back then

he's hardly gonna be able to make a confession, is he?

I'm sure that was part of Emily's thinking.

Really?

She seemed pretty far gone at the end. Thanks mate.

Well, she had a lot to carry.

To think, the river that runs underneath us

governed her life for 40 years.

A sobering thought.

Yeah, talking of sober, there's a very nice pub

a couple of minutes just...

Bloody hell.

- What? - [Car door slams]

Oh. Go on, I'll see you in the pub.

Are you sure?

- Sir. - Gents.

Guvnor.

You okay?

Yeah.

Good job.

I wish it had ended differently.

It was never going to end well.

You cracked this one, Sasha.

They're a good team, and you're good with them.

I just wanted to say that.

So, you joining them in the pub?

Yeah, quick one.

It's been a long day.

-Shall i- -don't even try it, ned.

See you on the next one.

Yeah.

[Gentle music]