London Underground New Tricks

# It's all right It's OK

# Doesn't really matter if you're old and grey

# It's all right I say it's OK

# Listen to what I say

# It's all right, doing fine

# Doesn't really matter if the sun don't shine

# It's all right I say it's OK

# We're gettin' to the end of the day. #

Hello?

Hello? It's me.

WOMAN SCREAMS

-I use those little bags.

-What little bags?

You crack the egg into them

and then drop the whole thing into boiling water.

No, no, you don't use bags.

You just get the water swirling nicely...

-Yeah, and then you add vinegar.

-No, I've tried this.

-It just produces vinegar-flavoured egg water.

-Morning.

-All right?

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 ten minutes,

somebody set off the fire alarm again.

-Morning, Sasha.

-Hello.

Morning.

DAC Hancock has something for us.

-Oh, good.

-Oliver Houghton.

The guy they fished out of the sewer?

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

Ah.

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?

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, 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 said we would accommodate...

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?

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

Yes, it's completely political.

Fine. Then I want a demarcation. Houghton is yours.

-This unsolved case...

-David Straka.

-The artist?

-Yep.

He's ours.

No looking over my shoulder, no interfering.

Suits me. He's all yours.

But I will need updates.

OK, here comes the exposition.

David Straka was a conceptual artist,

living and working in Hampstead.

STANDING GROANS

May 20th, 1994, David Straka was found dead

on the Vale of Health on Hampstead Heath.

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.

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

-That's a juicy one.

-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?

-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.

Were they romantically involved?

-Good question. Don't know.

-Ah, right.

So we're looking for a connection between this bloke Straka,

drowned on the Heath by somebody he picked up there,

and a film critic who ends up dead in a sewer 20 years later?

Now with all due respect, Guv'nor, there are three seasoned cops here

-who'll tell you there's bugger all in this.

-Yeah.

-Two.

-Hey?

Two. This seasoned cop has just spotted something interesting.

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.

He wasn't beaten or 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 boats and trade and whatnot.

It 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 had 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 all of that... except for the dead dogs.

Well, the Fleet has two sources.

One is over that way, in the grounds of Kenwood House

and the other one is here.

Here?

Here. This is the source.

The river flows down that way, through Hampstead Ponds

and then down to Camden, King's 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 BUZZES

DOOR LOCK 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.

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.

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.

The whole what?

A gathering of the artistically inclined.

David's inner circle, if you will.

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.

Just Ruth and Cyril remain and I haven't seen them for years.

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.

Do you have contact details for either of them?

I'm afraid not. Lost to the mists of time.

What's this?

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-contextualised.

Minor, as I say.

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

I'm interested in this.

It's just some cheap home-made film clips David had happened upon.

And where did he happen upon them?

-I've no idea.

-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 into 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 re-assemble them

and build some sort of performance piece around them.

But he never managed to track down all the clips.

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 take a look at them.

SINISTER 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.

So why was MacFarlane so keen to dismiss them?

I think there's more to it.

-Do you want to run with these clips for a bit?

-Yeah.

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

Who's Emily Fraser?

She was another one of Straka's assistants.

She worked with Oliver Houghton.

How many assistants does a conceptual artist need?

-Two, apparently.

-What about me?

You're on secondment to Danny Mulder's spooky woo-woo department.

-What?

-STANDING IMITATES GHOST

Do you like art?

Is that an actual question?

It's like asking someone if they read books.

I don't know much about art but I like it, yeah. Of 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?

-Emily Fraser?

-Yes.

Detective Chief Inspector Sasha Miller. This is Gerry Standing.

Has something happened?

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, no, nothing like that.

Is there somewhere we can talk?

Yes, yes. I have an office upstairs.

That Francis Bacon you were looking at,

it's considered a landmark in British post-war art.

Oh, right.

Doesn't mean you'd want it hanging

on your living room wall, though, huh?

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 Biomorphs

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.

-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 would just be tidying up the studio

or collecting his dry-cleaning.

-The project he was working on when he died...

-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 any 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.

It wasn't exactly a rare phenomenon in that world.

Were he and Oliver Houghton ever lovers?

Ollie? God, no. No, Ollie was definitely straight.

He's a good person to talk to, though,

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

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

it's been a long time.

-Um...

-What?

You don't know about Oliver Houghton, do you?

He was murdered two days ago.

It was in the papers, we assumed you knew.

No, 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 on the Heath.

How can that connect to Ollie being killed two decades later?

We don't really know if it does.

I think we've got everything we need.

Well, if you do need more information about David,

you should probably talk to Ruth Shireen.

Yes, I think Sam MacFarlane mentioned her.

You've spoken to Sam MacFarlane?

Well, he's Straka's biographer.

Biographer is 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.

-It might be more your thing.

-Hmm.

Thanks for your time, Miss Fraser.

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 here.

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.

Do 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.

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.

I say spa, it was really more of a knocking shop.

But it's the wells that are interesting.

Very(!)

So, all this water came from the Fleet?

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.

-SHIREEN:

-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.

-You didn't rate him?

-Oh, no, he was brilliant.

That's one of the reasons I was there.

He was a guest lecturer in my last year at Goldsmiths. Amazing man.

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

But there was all the media interest and the Cool Britannia bullshit.

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.

Hmmm. That's nice.

Thank you, it's part of a series I'm working on based

on the Protestant work ethic and how it's been corrupted by the media

and systemically taken advantage of by the politico-financial cabals.

Yeah, I like the fruity bits.

Speaking of distracted.

Yeah, David... I think he started to believe in all the hype

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.

Those clips David found were just bad.

Pretentious home-made 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 a 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 he and Straka started going 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 into the group.

Sam MacFarlane?

Sam was up to his eyes in all that rubbish.

Him and Watkins belonged to some sort of occult-pagan

secret society thing.

All rolled-up trouser legs and dodgy handshakes.

I mean, Cyril was properly, properly dark,

which made him exactly David's type.

What, they were having a relationship?

Watkins and Straka? Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Really, really intense.

Do you think Watkins was capable of murder?

That's a big question. I wouldn't want to say that about anyone.

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

so I don't really know what happened.

But when I heard about Ollie,

-my mind immediately did leap back there.

-Why?

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.

This was the course of the Fleet.

It wound down through Pakenham Street, Phoenix Place

and through here.

So this street rising up, is that the riverbank?

Exactly. Herbal Hill, over there, got its name because...

Because they grew herbs there?

Yes, there's Vine Street, Saffron Hill.

But we're here for this.

Please don't tell me you recognised 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

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, then King's Cross,

Clerkenwell and on down to Blackfriars.

Now where we're standing in fact, Holborn, that literally means

Old Bourne 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, then that would change the narrative and probably make...

-Oh.

-What?

I think I know what this is.

DOORBELL RINGS

DOORBELL RINGS

DOOR OPENS

Oh, thanks.

Eyes front, Gerry.

Mr MacFarlane?

Mr MacFarlane?

He's in a coma. Blunt force trauma.

What did he give you that was so important?

All he gave us were those 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.

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.

For example, this is the Hardy Tree...

-The what?

-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.

As you see, it's heavy with symbolism.

Lots of flowing water, which ties it in with the Fleet River.

So it's all about flow.

-Is that a knife going in there?

-Yes, it is.

We think it's some kind of sacrificial dagger.

So the knife goes in at the beginning.

And then in the last clip, the knife goes in again,

-but this time it's... STRICKLAND:

-Got blood on it.

In the beginning, the blade is cleansed by the flowing water of the river.

You saw something burning there, that was sage,

which lots of cultures use as part of a cleansing ritual.

Hold 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.

You think Oliver Houghton was killed by, what, wizards?

This isn't about Oliver Houghton.

You asked us to look into David 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 have you got access to his writing?

Because he published it on his blog.

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

What did it say, Steve?

Well, Sasha, we know Houghton was obsessed with these clips, right.

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

whether they're a hoax, where the missing bits were, stuff like that.

But 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 movie,

it might just be some avant-garde porno.

What's that?

-MCANDREW:

-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 postmortem report.

Oliver Houghton had that symbol branded onto his arm.

Branded? He really was taking these clips seriously.

-STRICKLAND:

-Did Straka have one of those?

I never saw any mention of it.

Here...

Yes, I remember it.

You didn't mention anything of this nature before.

No. Please sit down.

Thank you.

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.

-How's that?

-Well, because it's silly, isn't it, this occult stuff?

-But David Straka believed in it.

-I suppose so, yes.

-And Oliver Houghton?

-Yes.

But you can't... You don't think this had anything to do with...

We don't know, Emily. But we're finding that some people

seem to take these film 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.

Do you have any idea what this symbol means?

Yeah, 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.

Branding's a bit extreme. Straka didn't have one, did he?

Cyril Watkins had the brand.

I only met him a few times.

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

But he had the brand.

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

And he said the pain was a vital part of the experience.

He 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, depends on your definition of a relationship.

They were definitely...

-Dad?

-Haircut.

Where are you going, Dad? You had a haircut Monday.

Sorry about this.

Dad.

Door's jammed.

No, it's locked. Dad, you don't need to go anywhere.

Your hair looks nice. Come on.

Who's this?

Just some friends who've popped round.

-Steve. Hello.

-Hi, I'm Sasha.

I know you.

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 any more, 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.

Yes, he and David were in a relationship.

The exact nature of it is 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've...?

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

Good evening, ladies and gentlemen.

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

so let's get started, shall we?

A bit of house-keeping 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 actually every Thursday.

Also, David from the Lost River Explorer's Society

sends his apologies.

He was due to give a short presentation on what the LRES...

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 is already raring to go.

That's the woman from Straka's studio.

-You sure?

-Absolutely.

-Excuse me.

-Sorry, excuse us.

Excuse me! Oi!

Right, get the car, cut her off.

WOMAN GROANS IN PAIN

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 into a series of film clips and the Fleet River.

No-one in Straka's circle seems to have had a very high opinion of you.

And then there's Sam MacFarlane, who was also assisting us

with our enquiries 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 cos 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.

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?

-Not that part, no.

-No-one has.

-Then how do you...

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 Nikwuz.

The Nikwuz 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?

What kind of ritual?

Human sacrifice?

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, 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 blood-letting.

A woman's blood was offered up to the spirit of the Fleet River.

-For what purpose?

-That I don't know.

But I do know the effect it had.

Which was?

She died.

The woman.

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.

Its 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. It shows the victim of the sacrifice.

Have you seen it?

-No.

-Oh, for God's sake.

But David Straka saw it on the day he died.

It 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 that we've got that there is another clip

or that David Straka saw it...

Oliver Houghton saw it, too.

He told me afterwards that 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?

If they could have identified the woman, it would have led them

to whoever it was that 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 little difficult to prove

if the only people who can support it are dead.

Emily's not dead.

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 clip in his studio for Ollie,

Emily saw it, too.

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? 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?

-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.

I understand that this must seem a little far-fetched,

but if you did see this clip but you're scared because you...

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 was 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.

-You are joking.

-Houghton was a writer, he must have kept notebooks.

Tonnes of them. Shelves and shelves, literally.

So somewhere in there must be something.

Houghton is not your case, Sasha.

I know, but say he saw this 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.

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.

-This is about you controlling me.

It's about you abusing your seniority to...

I'm not the one who brings our personal life to work.

We don't have a f... 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.

-There's no-one here!

OK. 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.

But please...

-I'll see what I can do.

-(Thank you.)

OK, I've spoken to Ned Hancock and I think he's going to let us...

What are you working on?

Houghton's notebooks.

I requested them first thing.

Ned sent them round a couple of hours ago.

(Bastard!)

Never mind. What have we got?

Well, I've got a few references, but nothing much to go on.

The first is a note 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?

Holborn Viaduct?

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

but there's not much to go on here. It 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

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?

-Ludgate.

-If I was going to perform a human sacrifice,

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

But you'd be hard pressed to find somewhere with greater

-psycho-geographical significance, though.

-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 bastardisation 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.

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

someone up and dripping their blood all over the place?

Any of these buildings, if they were empty in the early '70s.

That's no use to us, there'd 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.

-Wow.

So whereabouts do you want to be?

I've lost my bearings.

-That way's north?

-Yup.

So Ludgate is that way?

This is amazing.

It's a sewer.

Oh, come on. How often do you get to come to places like this?

We're cops, Sasha, we spend half our lives knee-deep in shit.

You're no fun, that's your problem.

That is very much their problem.

But 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 led down to the Fleet.

Some of the buildings destroyed in the Blitz had basements

that were permanently sealed off when they were re-built.

Basements that can only be accessed from down here.

-GUIDE:

-This is about where Ludgate is.

What about these side tunnels?

Maintenance access, some are for run-off.

All right, let's split up.

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.

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 who 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?

That wouldn't be normal, would it?

I mean, I know it makes people feel uncomfortable and slightly awkward,

-but how do you think I feel when I walk into...

-Ssh!

What?

Nothing. Just ssh.

They should have given us protective clothing for this.

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

You're going to burn all your clothes?

Well, maybe not burn, no, but get it super cleaned over and over,

just to get rid of the smell.

It's not even halfway up the boots, Gerry.

Yeah, and there's the gas.

You know, they've got pockets of methane or whatever it is down here.

One little spark and boom!

Yeah, mutant creatures. You know, rats the size of dogs, apparently.

Yeah, all right, you can take the piss

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

-Oh, and I am, am I?

Well, I've been up to your neck of the woods, yeah,

that's where I remember the smell from.

-Oh! What's that?

-Careful!

-What's that?

-It's an alligator, I think.

-It's not an alligator, you dope.

-What?

-It's a trap door.

Right, everybody back down the ladder. This is now a crime scene.

Right, thanks.

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

is of a woman in her early 20s.

The rate of decomposition indicates she's been dead about 40 years.

-So what do we reckon?

-It's her.

OK. So we're assuming that these film clips do in fact depict some kind

of ritual blood-letting that went wrong and this woman,

whoever she was, 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 this woman

in this clip, that would explain why Oliver Houghton was killed as well,

cos 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 sect..

This isn't your case, Sasha.

This body that's just been found is 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?

-Sasha!

-This is about the 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 going to 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 have got precisely nowhere with.

If it wasn't for Griffin and 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.

OK, so it's the 20-year gap between the murder of David Straka

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

Houghton wasn't exactly in hiding.

It 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?

We don't know that she saw it.

She got pretty defensive when we asked her about it.

If Houghton was a member of this occult group,

maybe they had a falling out.

He could have been onside 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,

so somewhere, recently, he saw or did something

-that made him a target.

-And it'll be 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?

I finally got a copy of Houghton's hard drive.

Now, when he died, he was working on a piece about

-underground British film-makers 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 have 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 Nikwuz.

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 are you looking at, Danny?

I think it's the same guy.

-Same as what?

-That made both films.

Look, look here, 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 is her only credit

and there's no record of her after 1972.

And she was never reported missing?

-No.

-Who directed the film, Steve?

Oh, you are kidding!

Edward? You've got some visitors.

Hello, Mr Fraser. Do you remember me?

Oh, yes, lovely Alice!

Hello, Mr Fraser, remember me too?

Steve. We met the other day.

How are you doing? OK?

Good man.

My name's Gerry. Now, we understand you used to make films?

Ah, yes. Very good films.

A long time ago now.

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

Proper films, you know, none of your video nonsense.

No. Of course not.

Do you have a projector for them?

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

Yes, I used to be a projectionist.

Leicester Square. 40 years.

Can I give you a hand setting it up?

Oh, yes.

There's one here about otters.

Oh, that was a nice film.

Very hard to get close to them.

You have to win their trust.

I'd like to see this one.

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.

I 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.

That 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 wasn't supposed to die.

And if he's confessed, I would have 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.

-TV GETS LOUDER

-Dad!

What? Oh, sorry, love.

-TV VOLUME LOWERS

-Look at him.

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

Mum, David...

He hasn't known for years.

So Oliver Houghton was in touch with you recently?

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 they would have taken Dad away

and he wouldn't have even understood why.

(Dad.

(I love you, Dad.)

I'm sorry.

It's all coming apart.

It's the river.

It still wants more.

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

Oh.

Come on, Mr Fraser.

Where's Emily gone?

Get after her.

-Get the carer back down here.

-Emily!

It's all right, she's not here.

Oh, I suppose she just popped out for something.

SHE SOBS

-She could be anywhere around here.

-Tell me about it.

Hi. Yeah, 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.

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 any more.

This will end it.

No.

I want to see her again.

No.

No, Emily!

LOUD THUMP, TYRES SQUEAL

CAR HORNS BLARE

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 going to 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.

She had a lot to carry.

To think, the river that runs underneath us

governed her life for 40 years.

-A sobering thought.

-Talking of sober,

there's a very nice pub a couple of minutes just down...

-Bloody hell.

-What?

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

You sure?

-Sir.

-Gents.

-Guv'nor.

-You OK?

-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.