Episode 4 - Part 1 Hinterland

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RINGING CONTINUES

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-Body was found this morning.

-Time?

-Just after six.

INDISTINCT

Soca are on their way, sir.

The body was burned in an attempt to conceal evidence.

Early results from pathology suggest likely cause of death

-a blow to the side of the head.

-Time of death?

-Some time last night but we're still waiting.

-Possessions?

-Set of keys, some coins.

-Mobile phone?

-No.

DNA, we've got a match.

Aron Bowen, 39 years old,

released from prison six months ago after serving 13 years for murder.

He was convicted in 2001 for the murder of Abi Watkins.

Girlfriend?

-Yeah.

-Have they got any kids?

-A little girl, sir, Ffion.

She was four years old when her mother was murdered.

-Domestic dispute?

-Abi was stabbed but they never found the weapon.

Bowen said he was innocent, never changed his story.

According to Bowen they fought, she hit him,

he hit her back then Bowen left the house.

He came back the next morning to find Abi dead.

It says here, the defendant fled the scene of the crime -

why run if you're innocent?

Maybe he was guilty.

Get onto probation, find out the terms of his release

-and when he was last in contact.

-Yes, sir.

-What about his family?

Do we know where they live?

Ynyslas Boatyard in Borth, place is run by the Bowens,

Aron's brother Cal and his wife, Delyth.

HAMMERING

Delyth Bowen?

Yes, how...can I help you?

We're here about your brother-in-law, Aron Bowen.

I'm afraid he was found dead this morning.

-What happened?

-We found his body on the beach,

we have reason to think that he was murdered.

Did you or your husband have any contact with Aron since

his release from prison?

No.

No, my husband...he and his brother haven't spoken for years.

Why is that?

Because of what he did.

Is that your daughter?

-Aron's daughter.

-Ffion?

-Yes.

We brought her up as our own.

After what happened, there was nowhere else for her to go.

Is your husband around, Mrs Bowen?

I'd like to talk to him.

He's in the yard.

Mr Bowen!

You don't seem very upset.

I always knew it would end like this.

-Where were you last night, Mr Bowen?

-Porthmadog.

I was picking up supplies, got home around eight.

Tell me about your brother.

-What about him?

-Well, were you and he ever close?

-Well, once...that was before...

-Before he murdered Abi Watkins?

Before he wrecked everything.

They should never have released him.

What about Ffion?

Aron's daughter, do you think she feels the same way?

He was never a father to her.

We're the only family she's ever known.

Ffion has spent the last 13 years rebuilding her life.

If that means anything to you, stay away from her.

And what about Aron's parents, your mother and father,

-can I speak to them?

-My father died nine years ago, stroke.

-What about your mother?

-You're welcome to try.

Annes Bowen?

I know why you're here. Delyth called me from the yard.

I'm sorry for your loss.

Did you have any contact with your son after his release?

No.

I wanted to see him, but... it was too hard.

-I didn't know what to say to him.

-You were still angry with him?

He should have stayed away. There was nothing for him here.

Not any more.

He was your son.

He brought shame on us all, killing that girl.

And now he's dead.

Ffion! Wait!

You're wasting your time here.

It's not me you should be talking to, it's them.

The family of the Watkins girl.

They always wanted to see my son dead. And now...

they've got what they wanted.

It's all right, it's all right.

It's going to be all right, OK?

It's all right.

-Marc Watkins.

-On the corner there, mate.

Marc Watkins?

-Did you know he'd been released?

-Yeah.

-Had you seen him about?

-No.

Haven't seen him since the day they put him away.

How do you feel knowing that the man who murdered your sister is dead?

-I don't feel anything. Should I?

-Well, you tell me.

They should have done us all a favour and drowned him at birth!

Those two should never have got together.

We told her and we warned her.

It's just our bad luck she chose him.

Her bad luck too.

Where were you last night, Mr Watkins?

I was with my father at his house.

All night.

Thank you, Mr Watkins.

I've spoken to probation services.

Aron Bowen missed two scheduled appointments.

His file was flagged on the national database last week.

Have we got an address for him?

-'Yeah, home and work, sending them over to you now.'

-Thanks.

Hope we got the right key now.

Have we met before?

Mr Latimer helped us

with our enquiries in the Devil's Bridge case.

So you did.

There's a switch here somewhere.

Aron Bowen - what was he like?

Couldn't say. Kept a pretty low profile.

You didn't ask any questions?

Well, it wasn't my place to.

But I could see by the way he carried himself there was...

-There was something going on with him.

-What do you mean?

I got the impression he was trying to...

make a go of it, trying to start again.

Good luck to him, I thought.

Did he have any friends?

Er... A man came over to see him couple of times. Er...

Can't say I got much of a chance to look at him.

-Did you get a name?

-No, I'm sorry.

Dark hair...

about the same age.

Aron Bowen worked for a drainage firm out on the marshes.

He got the job through a friend, a man called Craig Jones.

They went to school together, apparently.

I've been trying to contact the company,

but the office is closed for the day.

The calls keep going straight to voicemail.

Sir!

I've dug out everything I can on the Abi Watkins case.

Repeated applications for retrial. Defendant claimed he was innocent.

But he also said that his girlfriend

was seeing someone else behind his back.

Another man. Reckoned it was this other man that killed Abi.

Can you look into this, please?

Yes, sir.

'I just knew.

'The way she looked at me.

'The way she was around me.

'You can tell when a woman's cheating on you.

'I loved Abi, I would never hurt her. She was the mother of my child.

'Is that right?

'So what about the marks on her face?

'We argued.

'It got out of hand, it was an accident.

'And the fact she ended up dead?'

Tom?

'Was that an accident, too?

-'I think you killed Abi Watkins because you were jealous.

-No!

'Jealous that she was seeing another man.

-'No! That's not what happened!

-Oh, I think it is.

' I think that's exactly what happened.

'Why won't you listen to me? Why won't anyone listen to me?!

'I didn't kill Abi Watkins. It was the other man.'

All the evidence was against him.

Blood on his clothes, fleeing the scene of the crime.

-He had motive and opportunity.

-An open-and-shut case.

-What about the man he claimed Abi was seeing?

-Fabrication.

13 years of trying to overturn his conviction,

you don't think that counts for something?

Bowen was guilty, he just refused to admit it.

Some men do that.

The pathologist on the investigation, Dr Haydn Blake...

I want to talk to him.

No.

All the evidence you need is on record.

Iwan Thomas.

What about him?

Have you had any further contact with him?

No.

Good.

KNOCK AT DOOR

Yep?

Sir, there's someone in reception to see you.

Ffion Bowen, the victim's daughter.

My mother used to read to me.

Every night.

I used to lie next to her.

Her hair...

..it was so soft.

And then she was gone.

Have you had any contact with your father since his release?

We met up.

A couple of times.

Does your uncle know?

He wouldn't approve?

That's one way of putting it.

I wrote to my father a few years back.

There were things that I wanted to know.

Where they first met.

Where they used to go with each other.

Your uncle Cal, he thinks...

He thinks your father killed your mother.

How about you?

No.

I think my father was telling the truth.

Why do you say that?

When I was little...

..there was a man.

He used to come to the house...

..when Dad wasn't there.

-Are you sure?

-Yes.

I think that's who murdered Mum.

I think Dad found out who he was.

Mr Watkins?

My son Marc was with me all night, if that's why you're here.

Is this you?

My father's boat.

Have you still got it?

No, she sank.

10th of September, 1973.

My father and his friends went down with her.

I was the only one to survive.

-The boat had just come out of the yard.

-The Bowens' place?

Yeah.

We'd been out in worse weather.

But she was letting in water.

And you blamed the Bowens?

The pumps didn't work and the repairs didn't hold.

If they had, my father and his men would not have been lost.

I don't understand why my daughter got involved with that family,

after what they did to us.

She broke my wife Gwyneth's heart.

Aron Bowen said that your daughter Abi was seeing somebody else.

That's what he wanted you to believe, that he was innocent.

Aron Bowen was a murderer, just like his father.

A coward who wouldn't accept responsibility for what he had done.

What about your granddaughter, Ffion?

Huh, that woman wouldn't let us anywhere near her.

Annes?

Yeah...Annes.

Whatever Annes wants...

..Annes gets.

Mr Jones?

CROSSING ALERT WAILS

TRAIN HORN BLARES

When bad things happen...

..do you think it leaves a stain on the place?

I went to school with a girl who used to live here.

She was older than me.

Her father was a policeman.

Iwan Thomas?

Her and her mother were murdered.

I know.

But we caught the man who did it.

I told them I'd been to see you.

I told them I'd been seeing my dad.

What did they say?

Not a lot.

Nothing ever gets said.

What do you mean - nothing ever gets said?

They never talk about my mother.

Never about my father.

It's like they never existed.

But if they don't exist...

They do.

I'd better get back.

Ffion?

We will catch whoever killed your father, OK?

Ffion was in contact with her father.

They met up.

She didn't tell you?

Ffion has this idea of what her father was like.

The man he once was or the man he could have been.

But he was never there for her.

What sort of father is that?

MOBILE PHONE RINGS

Lloyd?

'The till we found at the victim's bedsit,

'there was an incident involving Aron Bowen.

'Three days ago.'

I spoke to the owner, he said Bowen didn't want to call the police.

Didn't want them involved.

-Cos he was on probation.

-Mm-hm.

When we spoke yesterday,

you said you hadn't seen Aron Bowen since his release.

That is you in that photograph, isn't it?

So I gave him a kicking.

What difference does it make?

He killed my sister.

Doesn't mean I had anything to do with his death.

No?

I wish I had it in me to do it, but I don't.

All my life I've wanted him dead.

And now that he is...

..it doesn't change anything.

He should never have come back here.

If he'd had any sense, he'd have stayed away.

Why?

Do you think that way he'd still be alive?

You had unfinished business with him.

No.

The other night at the garage.

That was just the start of it.

-A taste of what was to come.

-No.

But once you had a taste for it, there was no stopping you.

He killed my sister!

Stabbed her to death!

Now, everyone round here knows that he did it, everyone except you.

Why are you raking all this up?

Because he served his time.

Paid for his crime.

And now he's dead.

Murdered...

just like your sister.

It's got nothing to do with me,

I was at my father's house all night.

You think I'm the only one who wanted him dead?

His own family couldn't stand the sight of him.

His father never got over the shame, he drank himself to death.

And his mother, she hated her own son for what he'd done.

So, Aron's dead.

Good.

The world's a better place without him.

You don't have to take my word for it, you go talk to his mother

or brother, they'll tell you the same things as me.

Tell us about the night Abi was killed.

Mrs Bowen?

I heard Aron's car pull up outside.

I wasn't expecting him.

He came into the kitchen.

I could see he'd been involved in some kind of fight.

He was upset.

He said that he and Abi had argued.

That he'd made a mess of his life, he'd...

he'd made a mess of everything.

And he knew it.

And then...?

Well, I told him to sleep it off, sober up,

sort it out in the morning.

He slept here?

I sent him home.

And then...

what did you do?

Well, I went back to bed.

It was the last I ever saw of him.

Next morning...

police came to the house.

Told me what he'd done.

We warned him not to get involved with that girl.

But he wouldn't listen.

"I'm so sorry for all the years of sorrow you've endured.

"Perhaps I should have said something at the time,

"but the fact that my daughter was seeing someone else

"doesn't change what happened that night."

It's from Abi Watkins' mother, Gwyneth.

Thanking Aron Bowen for all the letters he'd sent her.

It was written three weeks before she died.

"I hope you can forgive me for staying silent

"in the same way that I must forgive you. Yours faithfully, Gwyneth."

She knew who her daughter was seeing.

Then Aron Bowen was right about the affair.

Maybe he was right about who killed Abi Watkins too.

The first letter we received from Aron...

we thought he was going to say he was sorry.

Ask for forgiveness.

We thought maybe he'd admit to what he'd done.

But he still kept protesting his innocence.

What did the letter say?

Nothing that he hadn't said in court.

But he still kept on writing...

..one letter after the other.

We didn't bother reading them in the end.

We just threw them in the fire.

I thought the letters had stopped.

But when Gwyneth died...

..I found out that...

..she'd been hiding them.

Your wife Gwyneth wrote this letter three weeks before she died.

She thought that Abi was seeing someone else.

Another man.

We think Aron Bowen recently found out who Abi was seeing.

And that man might be responsible for his death.

Who is he, Mr Watkins?

'I had nothing to do with it.

'And what about Abi Watkins?'

What about her?

Aron Bowen knew that Abi was seeing someone behind his back.

And that someone was you.

What happened? Did Aron find out?

-Did he come after you?

-No.

Is that why you killed him?

I didn't kill Aron, that's not what happened.

Then tell us what did happen!

Aron knew.

How?

I told him, everything. The truth.

-When?

-Last week.

-Why?

-Because I wanted him to admit to what he'd done.

He kept saying it wasn't him that killed Abi,

kept saying it was this man she was shagging behind his back.

But I knew that was a lie.

Because that man was you.

'Where were you the night Aron was killed?

'I was home.

'Were you with anyone?

'No.

'I was on my own.

'All night?

'All night.'

Tell us about the night Abi was killed.

Aron had been drinking.

I met up with him after work. He was in a bad way, he was angry.

I tried to talk to him, to calm him down.

He was having none of it.

We argued.

And off he went.

You didn't go after him?

So what DID you do?

I went home.

-But I was worried about Abi, so I went over there.

-To see her?

When I got there, the place was in a hell of a mess.

They'd been fighting.

Aron was gone.

But Abi had these marks on her face.

And then what?

I got angry.

I went over to Aron's flat and had it out with him.

What time was this?

One.

His truck was outside, I knew he was in there.

I just couldn't do it.

Couldn't face him.

I just sat there outside his flat.

Doing nothing.

Till when?

Three.

On the night Abi was killed, Craig said he was outside Aron's flat

between one and three in the morning.

This supports Aron's story that he went home that night.

If Craig Jones is telling the truth.

The coroner's report puts time of death for Abi Watkins

between one and four in the morning.

That still leaves Aron Bowen an hour to account for.

But Craig Jones's testimony suggests Aron was telling the truth.

I agree.

DC Ellis.

DS Owens.

A convicted murderer is found dead

and you're charged with finding the killer.

We think it's more complicated than that, sir.

We?

Yes, sir.

Craig's testimony casts doubt on the original conviction.

The Abi Watkins case is closed.

Aron Bowen was found guilty of her murder.

Now, our priority is to find out who killed Aron Bowen.

And not to undermine the original conviction.

But what if both cases go hand in hand, sir?

Aron Bowen served 13 years for a crime he did or did not commit.

And now he's lying in a mortuary.

I supported you, DCI Mathias.

Over Mari Davies.

And Gwen Thomas.

I hope you're not suggesting I didn't do my work properly.

That went well.

HE LAUGHS SOFTLY

What do we do about Craig Jones?

We do what we're told.

We hold him.

On the suspicion of killing Aron Bowen.

Where are you going?

To talk to Haydn Blake.

KNOCK ON WINDOW

Sorry to startle you, Dr Blake.

That's all right.

I don't see that Craig Jones' testimony changes anything.

Aron Bowen had an hour in which to commit this crime.

An hour that can't be accounted for.

Do you think Aron Bowen was guilty?

I don't deal in guilt and innocence, I deal in facts,

and the facts of this case are there in black and white.

Well, if that's true, why was I told not to talk to you?

But we are talking.

Thank you for your time, Dr Blake.

MOBILE PHONE VIBRATES

CHILDREN SHOUT ON TV

It's a pity they can't stay children for ever.

I've buried a husband...

lost a son...

..given my life to the yard...

..and for what?

Aron should have stayed away.

He should never have come back.

There was nothing left for him here.

He wanted to be close to Ffion.

To be a father to his daughter.

Cal is the only father that Ffion has ever known.

If Aron really cared for that girl, he'd have left her alone.

Did you know that Abi was having an affair with Craig Jones?

Do you think Craig could have killed your son?

What difference does it make?

SEAGULLS CRY

It makes a difference if your son was innocent.

PATTER OF RAIN

SPLASH

Ffion.

I didn't know where else to go.

Let me get you a towel.

There you go.

Sit down, sit down.

I should take you home. They'll be worried about you.

No, they won't.

They never gave Dad a chance.

None of them did.

It's my fault he's dead.

The night he was killed, he phoned me.

He said he wanted to see me, but I said no.

I couldn't keep lying like that.

As soon as I hung up, I regretted it.

I tried to phone him back.

But the line was busy.

If I'd have seen him that night, maybe he'd still be alive.

Are those your little girls?

Mm-hm, yeah.

Do you miss them?

Every day.

Hey...

No.

-Sorry.

-No, don't be silly, it's OK.

I'm going to take you home.

All right?

OK, stay there.

Ffion!

Ffion!

I'm no saint.

I'm no angel.

I may not be the best dad in the world.

I may not be the best human being in the world.

But that doesn't make me a killer.

-You need to stop this.

-I had no choice.

The truth!