Line Of Duty’s golden trio together again as spectre of ‘H’ reappears
THE golden trio is back together again (almost).
It’s taken three episodes of this series of Line Of Duty to reunite Hastings, Arnott and Fleming in the same room, but good things come to those who wait.
DI Kate Fleming “cooked her goose” after tipping off her new boss, DCI Joanne Davidson, that AC-12 was on her trail and planning a raid. Superintendent Ted Hastings, already feeling bitterly let down by Fleming’s decision to quit his team and move to murder, announces he’s through with her, when he learns she has sided with Davidson.
Of course we, the viewers, don’t want to believe this. We hope Fleming will find her way back into the fold. When her suspicions are aroused Pc Ryan Pilkington is involved in an attempt on Terry Boyle’s life (he tries to drown him in a lake after causing the police car they are travelling in to veer off the road), she alerts newly promoted DI Steve Arnott.
It’s not the warmest of reunions when Fleming and Hastings come face-to-face for the first time. Fleming tells the gaffer the attempted murder of Boyle could not have happened without leaks and/or collusion from Davidson’s team.
“My first duty as a police officer is preservation of life sir, that’s why I’m here,” Fleming tells her former boss.
“In that case, DI Fleming, this department is grateful for your cooperation,” he replies, followed later by a subtle, little nod of acknowledgement between the two.
When Arnott looks up Pilkington’s file, he’s shocked to recognise the murder team’s latest recruit. The penny drops: Fleming remembers interviewing him as a juvenile offender while Arnott points out he tried to chop his fingers off. The pair are onto him now.
Pilkington, meanwhile, is being lauded as a hero for ‘rescuing’ Boyle, even though another officer drowned in the lake. Fleming knows he’s behind the accident, though, and quizzes him: why take a different route than planned? Why open his window? Pilkington looks nervous, as well he might.
We also hear about the mysterious ‘H’ for the first time this series when Hastings is called for a meeting with Deputy Chief Constable Andrea Wise and Police and Crime Commissioner Rohan Sindwhani. Prior to the meeting, AC-12 is shown unaired footage of murdered journalist Gail Vella, in which she grills Sindwhani about police failure to pursue officers who colluded in child sex exploitation. She says, instead, they went after celebrities and VIPS, with no charges ever brought.
Hastings gets to resurrect one of his most famous lines when he tells Wise he and his officers conduct themselves “to the letter of the law”. Wise later tells him to stop chasing phantoms and to give up on the notion of ‘H’.
“Your inquiry into ‘H’ should close,” she says. “This isn’t about old battles.” Hastings replies: “The name is Hastings, Mam. I’m the epitome of an old battle.” That’s the quote of the night.
Now that AC12 has discovered the dumped fridge from Boyle’s flat was used to store Jackie Laverty’s body for years, it knows there’s a link between the OCG, Laverty and Vella’s murders. Everything is linking back to series one and Hastings is on a mission — to get justice for the dead and to finally bring down the elusive ‘H’.