Things got a little twisty on Unforgotten last time, what with our suspects meeting in a clandestine fashion in the back of the pub, and not for the usual rumpy pumpy, either! Let’s find out how far they’re innit together, shall we?

Colin Osborne (Mark Bonnar) slinks in the backdoor after his meeting with Sara Mahmoud (Badria Timimi) and Marion Kelsey (Rosie Cavaliero), surprised to find his husband Simon (Charlie Condou) wide awake and waiting for him. It seems Flo (Amy Jayne) had a nightmare, she’s feeling a little unsettled with Colin LYING LIKE A DISHEVELED SWEATSOAKED RUG ALL THE TIME.

That’s right, Colin, Simon knows you weren’t at the office and he doesn’t seem the type to let a bunch of lies go, either. He’s a picker, an unraveller and you keep digging yourself in deeper, Colin.

Simon finally gets to the heart of it, was the 80s so bad he accidentally killed someone? Nooooo and Colin would like to never have to answer that question again and GOOD LUCK WITH THAT.

Sara gets home to an angry spouse herself; Hassan (Adeel Akhtar) does not understand when being a prostitute was a viable life choice. He shouts so loudly that he draws the attention of their youngest son, DAMNIT HASSAN! Ah shite, he spells it out really clearly and loudly so that their kiddo hears and can understand it all.

His point is that she wasn’t a kid; she was 21 when she was hooking and that confused me a little as well. I have known prostitutes and known of many more; most were very young and the whole setting up a house address with gas, etc, seemed far too domesticated for what she was talking about, being a 16 year old on the streets. Then 5 years later she’s setting up a slam pad? Odd

Now he wants to know about the dead man; was she in Italy or not when he died? And can she prove it? She and I want to know if he means to him or the police; how far gone is our Hassan? Just the police, so he may still be on TeamSara, even if her kiddos probably aren’t any more. For a little while anyway. She swears on their lives that it wasn’t her, and come ON, that’s what Colin said, right before he lied! He doesn’t want anyone else knowing about this (MAYBE STOP YELLING THEN)

Which broke my heart a little. Aw Hassan. This doesn’t have anything to do with you, this was years before she met you and you started a family. I understand you being upset, but it really isn’t your call, what she did with her body years before she met you. ALSO, you wanted her to talk to you, and this is what you do?

DCI Cassie Stuart (Nicola Walker) has taken the extra step of driving poor Jason Walker (Will Brown) home, she even offers consultations with her kiddos as they lost their dad at a young age too. He calls attention to what he calls his faulty wiring, he’s not quite right. He doesn’t get asked out for a beer, so he thinks he might be shit at it. Cassie isn’t worried, her kiddos can sort him out.

Sara’s youngest Yousef (Alan Asaad) isn’t talking to her, but it looks as though he didn’t tell his brothers, either, so counting that as 1/3 not being bad.

Cassie and Sunny (Sanjeev Bhaskar) are en route, calling Tessa Nixon (Lorraine Ashbourne) on the way. Perhaps she could give an accounting of her movements of those 48 hours after the disappearance of her husband lo those 27 years ago? Tessa snaps a sarcastic reply; Cassie pushing back with “tragically I’m sure those few days are ingrained on your memory” did a couple of things for me.

One… she no longer is handling Tessa with kid gloves, so she has more than a decent amount of suspicion of her and Two… now Tessa knows it too and that she can’t bluster her way through not answering any longer.

Cassie and Sunny brainstorm about other suspects; there’s no definitive way to know if Colin was in the psych ward or not for sure, apparently it’s like the Italian border for Sara, porous as all get out.

Hey, Zoe (Jodie Tyack) didn’t come in for her chemo appointment, would Marion know anything about that? Nope? Sure. Glad you didn’t yell at a vulnerable, dying teenager to alleviate your own guilt or anything, Marion.

Oh. Well. This is surprising; James Moray (who they called Hugh Moray last episode, so I’m confused, but anyway, it’s Tony Gardner from Last Tango in Halifax!) tells Murray (Jordan Long) that Colin was run off after a serious sexual assault allegation made by a Maria Gonzalez. In fact, it was a rape allegation, one that never went as far as the police. So. Now he’s a lawyer / barrister and he handles cases just like these and he never had to answer anything in court? And he raped a woman? But. He’s gay. And before it gets going, I understand that rape is about aggression and not sexual attraction, but I don’t remember hearing the statistics on people raping against the orientation they identify with.

Cuppa break!

Yousef is acting out in a predictable fashion. Sara’s at home facing the music while Hassan listens from the other room as the detectives interview her.

Sunny starts at a pretty uncomfortable place. Exactly what kind of services did she provide? That was a beautiful set-up for a “$20, same as in town, Father!” joke, but Sara isn’t in the mood. Just the usual services, but Sunny presses. David Walker liked to hurt and be hurt by women. When she still demurs, he brings out record of her visit to a hospital (I assume that was what all those initials meant) the same day she texted her address to David’s pager.

We get a quick flash of a dental x-ray; he must have hit her? A dislocated jaw isn’t the sort of thing you can accomplish yourself. Sunny brings it all the way home, maybe next time she saw him he was even more violent and then in self defense…finally Sara speaks, denying of course.

Her alibi for Italy isn’t much better, traveling alone, staying in hostels and making no friends. Cassie and Sunny make to leave, but Cassie has just one more thing. That’s a big deal, isn’t it? “Upping sticks” and charging off to Italy for 9 months?

Upping sticks is my new favourite expression! That might even be better than getting the wrong end of the stick! Why do all my fave sayings have sticks in them? Mustn’t ponder

Ohhh dayum, Zoe’s absconded and her parents read her diary looking for her and found the reference to day-drankin’ with Marion, that’s not going over well.

Her boss Nicola (Katherine Jakeways) sends her home immediately; I’d be surprised if she still has a job after this. Zoe’s pulling a Girl On The Train, drinking on the train in her hospital scrubs in the most obvious way possible. I hated that book, does everyone know that?

Cassie’s where I am with Colin, he raped a woman for sure? She clarifies with Murray, who didn’t know that Colin is gay. He’ll check with the lawyer who handled it and Maria Gonzalez herself, see if they can get to the bottom of it.

Oh dang, Yousef decides to tell a classmate about his mum, however close he might think he is with Mustafa (Yusuf Hofri), no way this will stay contained.

Marion gives up and calls Tony (Nigel Lindsay); she’s in trouble and needs help. I hope she comes clean, she’ll probably feel much better.

Ah, it seems my mistrust in young Tyler was misplaced, he is indeed hooked up with Flo’s mum who is hooked on something else entirely and jonesing for a fix. She won’t get it from Colin, who shoos her tweaking bum away before scooting himself, leaving behind his cell phone. Oh. That was a bad move.

Side note: I am so torn; I love the new iPhone 7’s size, but I hate Apple. Plus I can’t afford it, but that doesn’t seem to slow down my illicit desire for this most terrible of all Apple products. Dang you, forbidden fruit! Dang you to heck.

DC Jake Collier (Lewis Reeves) calls Cassie and Sunny with some devastating news as they’re driving back. The young woman who took the pictures of Colin and David at the Tory fundraiser is a Mandy Horcross, who was but 12 when she took those pictures. She was sexually assaulted by David Walker twice at that time.

Man

Cassie gathers herself to ask about credibility. Jake believed her. She had nothing to gain and everything to lose by telling him. Cassie asks him to round everyone up for a full briefing. Two things: could it have been David who assaulted Maria Gonzalez instead of Colin? And secondly, did Colin kill David because of the assault?

Marion’s crying and trying to explain everything to Tony from back then. Sinead Quinn (Mairead McKinley) wasn’t just Marion’s roommate, she was her lover. Tony knew nothing of her past, or that there was quite so much of it to be made aware of, if he wants her to talk to him he should probably stop shouting at her about how f*cked up she is.

Last week the menz were all “tell me what’s wrong?! Talk to me!” and this week when the ladies are talking, everyone’s shouting them down!

Cassie and Sunny are having a disagreement about David Walker’s possible culpability in his molestation of that young girl; Sunny doesn’t give a toss about his past if he’s going around doing that. Cassie knows that it’s been proven to really mess people up, however, and this references what I talked about briefly in The Magicians recap this week: sometimes people follow that behaviour.

Mustafa almost breaks a leg running to tell everyone about Sara’s past, saw that coming a mile away.

Sunny and Cassie can’t let this go; she wants to know when do they stop trying to understand children who were abused? On their tenth birthday? When? Sunny suggests when they’re adults, but no, that’s when they’re punished and society is protected from them, why stop trying to understand them? Sunny thinks that abused children who subsequently molest others are choosing to do so and as such: no understanding is required.

This feels very topical in this world right now; people are voting away from complicated and grey areas and compassion and understanding and towards short declarative statements of varying levels of truthiness. What say you? Is it easier to not try and understand, to just punish without spending any time on reform? Is it better to turn away all refugees, giving up our chance to help others because they are different and in case a wolf lurks among the innocent? Do we ignore the comparative inequities in our world and shrug and say “nobody oppressed me!”? I worry

Cassie has come up with a new strategy for the team; most everyone will be working on the existing lines of inquiries, the only thing that caught me there was that they’ve only been able to prove that one of their suspects had actually met David Walker.

The second line of inquiry will be delving into the rest of David Walker’s secrets, investigating the allegations of child abuse and checking as to whether he abused any of the suspects while they were children. OH.

Sunny and Cassie aren’t really speaking to each other yet. Cassie’s off to ask Tessa about this news solo while he’s running down everything else.

Everybody knows about Sara’s past at the mosque, everyone staring at Hassan as he walks in. Erp.

Colin didn’t password protect his phone. Are you kidding me??? You’ve got a junkie out there running around with your open phone worth several hundred quid, you’d better hope she sold it. Simon does.

Hassan tells Sara and finally, FINALLY, he comforts her as she breaks down.

Cassie confronts Tessa with the news of David’s abuse; Tessa’s assertion that she knew nothing is almost pro forma at this point, especially since we see in the flashback that she very much did know about it, perhaps even destroying evidence. Cassie doesn’t waste much time on Tessa’s protestations, pushing past to ask for more help while Paul (Douglas Hodge) and Jason listen from the kitchen.

Cassie presses forward to ask about David’s charitable work. He was involved in with a children’s charity and that’s it, Tessa can’t take it any longer and she breaks down. Cassie asks for a complete list and then Jason walks in and backhands her!

You can forget about that beer with her kids, you wanker!

I’d like to try and understand Jason, because I think he is quite messed up (hmmm), but you can’t go around smacking a person half your size who happens to be a police officer!

She’s explaining later to Sunny how she isn’t going to charge Jason, it was an accident. It was NOT an accident, Cassie, here, let’s roll tape even though I didn’t want to gif this

NOT THE LEAST BIT ACCIDENTAL

I’m with Sunny here, she can’t cover for him, this is a real problem. Understanding is one thing, but you still have to punish. Isn’t this the sort of thing that happened with Colin? Don’t want to besmirch his reputation or career, so they’ll just handle his serious rape allegation in house. “He has enough to deal with.” What happens next time? To all the people not protected properly?

Sunny gets off the phone to find his daughter drying dishes and an internal alarm goes off: what does she want?? Gemma (Aasiya Khan) wants him to smile, they’ve been few and far between lately.

It’s not going great at the Mahmoud household; the older boys don’t want to play That Was A Different Person as their dad does, the oldest gets violent as the middle kiddo gets emailed an altered porn video on his phone with his mum’s head photoshopped in. Oy. Yousef comes in Middle goes for him, but he blames it on “she” who did it in the first place. Oy again.

Martin (Peter Egan) is ready to talk a little bit more about searching for Cassie’s mother’s lover; he’s still planning to approach this man and talk to him about the affair. Cassie does not understand. She pounds wine and picks at her father, who I think has a right to at least TALK to the man. And it isn’t illegal, borderline or otherwise, so I don’t know what she’s going on about. In fact, I don’t know what she’s going on about at all! This hasn’t anything to do with her, this is her father’s relationship with her mother and he’s clearly in a great deal of pain.

Adam (Jassa Ahluwalia) breaks things up just then, what’s going on? Has grandad been beating his “cheeky little sod” of a mother again? Not this time!

Paul’s pulling the plug; he’s sending Becca (Dominique Drew) away, he has to look out for his child. He needs to protect her from Jason, and not just from violence. His words land like blows on Tessa’s shoulders; Jason would never hurt Becca. But Paul doesn’t trust that she sees Jason clearly, she didn’t know what David was up to, so. Like father, like son? He’s going away with Becca, leaving with “I do love you” while Tessa watches and Jason pouts in the upstairs window.

Everything is on lockdown at the Mahmoud house, nobody answering the door as Jamal (Moses Adejimi) shouts through the letterbox. They’re all there for her and everyone else, that must be a relief to hear, but nobody moves.

Sunny’s hit the ground running into David’s past, there were rumours of unusual behaviour with the children, sigh. Jake finds the same thing, but of course nobody was sure, so nobody reported anything.

Marion finally makes it home to find Tony sitting with a cuppa; he’s not taking her shutting him out any longer. If they want to work, she’ll have to let him in.

Colin’s missed picking Flo up at school by an HOUR. What the Sam Hill?? Oh goodness, she must have been terrified and embarrassed and worried and adopting is supposed to be MORE stable than one’s smackhead momma.

Cassie and Sunny are together again, interviewing a former reform school student who was abused by David Walker. She was an unwilling participant, but there were others who allowed it so they could be invited to “the gatherings.”

Oy

DC Fran Lingley (Carolina Main) has finally tracked down Sinea Quinn, who looks almost exactly like an unwashed version of Marion!

Simon’s patting down the social worker Janet (Emma Cunniffe) who isn’t overly concerned about Colin’s slip-up anyway when Tyler calls: he wants 20 grand or he’ll spill about Colin being interviewed about a murder case. I’d say Colin would be in quite a bit more trouble if it turned out that they knew he’d had a serious rape allegation in his past.

Cassie has found out about the gatherings; they were held over a two year period and involved several grown men, including David and vulnerable children from assorted care homes. They need to find out which of the suspects could have been at one of those care homes. I wonder if they all were.

Fran’s interview with Sinead is bearing serious fruit, she doubted Marion’s dedication to the IRA cause, but did remember Marion passing around a picture of David and asking them to kill him. WHAT? And we’re out

Well. Things took a turn for the exceedingly disturbing this time, didn’t they? I am not sure what to think; I was picturing some kind of Orient Express type of revenge scenario, but with a single stab wound, I can’t see how. I am trying not to be dismayed by the direction of the story, besides the visceral nature of the substance, pedophilia rings are well-mined as a plot device but I will do my best to keep an open mind. I can’t think of anything witty about trying to suss out which of our suspects was horribly abused as a vulnerable child, so I’ll just leave things right where they are. Until next time!