Waking The Dead : What Happened and Why in
Towers of Silence

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The Cold Case Squad is back, after a fashion. We knew after Shadowplay that D.S. Mel Silver would not be returning to the squad but as Towers of Silence begins we see only Detective Superintendent Peter Boyd and Psychological Profiler Dr. Grace Foley. Peter and Grace are in a hobby shop to purchase a model airplane. Theoretically, they need the plane as a visual aid for their latest case, but really they don't. It could be worse, Boyd really wanted a nifty yellow radio controlled plane. They bought both.

Boyd and Grace mention someone who has been sent to prison for murder. We endure an apprehensive moment when we see Detective Inspector Spencer Michael Jordan being led into prison. (gosh, I hope Spence's real middle name isn't Michael) He says he is there for assaulting a police officer. Could it be that Spence has finally snapped under Boyd's command and lashed back at his commander? It really is not impossible to believe, although it is more likely that Boyd would be the one to snap.

Spence is put into a cell with a man who is serving a life sentence for murder. This is actually the person to whom Boyd and Grace were referring. His name is Sarosh Mehta and he pled guilty to murdering his brother Nadir. Sarosh said he killed Nadir over gambling debts. Grace thinks that he did not do it because he does not seem guilty. I really need Grace to pick the winning lottery numbers for me, the woman has some amazing powers. Sarosh has also been known to murmur things about thousands of lives being at stake.

Airplanes have nothing to do with the mystery. You can make what you will of Boyd and Grace playing with a wingless jumbo jet but the story goes that on October 4, 1998, after a plane was unloaded at Heathrow, someone stole all of the cargo from the warehouse. There was no record of what was stolen. A week later the baggage handler's body was found in a Kent water tower. His throat was cut and his hands were severed from his body. That baggage handler was Nadir Mehta.

Nadir's body was found by Officer Andy Stephenson of the Kent Serious Crime unit in a watertower. Boyd requested D.S. Stephenson join them in the investigation. The reason this is a cold case is that a November 1998 another plane was sent to the airplane graveyard in Arizona. Only recently has it been discovered that there is a dead body in that plane. This body, like Nadir Mehta, has no hands. They figure out that the body had to have been placed on the plane in Heathrow, the body is returned to London to be examined by Dr. Felix Gibson.

Boyd is not that thrilled to have Andy Stephenson join them despite the fact that he requested her. Yes Andy is a she. And more important she is a she who bears a resemblance to Mel Silver. Okay, at first glance she doesn't but look again, the resemblance is there. Grace lectures him on being a baby. Boyd responds by being Boyd. Andy's first act is to wreck a perfectly good phallus symbol by putting the wings on the jumbo jet.

Who the heck is Dr. Felix Gibson, you ask, and by the way where is Dr. Frankie Wharton? Shouldn't Frankie be examining this corpse? Well yes, Frankie would if she were still part of the cold case squad, but she isn't, so there. Frankie has left and is now working in research, according to Grace. The immediate difference we are supposed to get between Felix and Frankie is that Felix invited Boyd to help her in the lab. Boyd wants us to believe that Frankie would throw him out, I'm not convinced that is true.

The body in the plane from Arizona is way gross. It has decomposed a great deal and barely looks like human remains. Grace wants to give him a name to give him dignity. Boyd suggests "Crispy Duck" which does not immediately bring dignity to mind. Crispy Duck may have been killed by staples through his skull into his brain. Gross.

Here is the most crucial moment of the episode. I can swear Boyd says "thingee" while tapping on That Board Thingee. Really, does anything else matter? But the show continues.

Boyd and Andy go to Heathrow to follow up on robberies for which there was no follow up investigation. If the 1998 cargo robbery were an inside job then it is possible that there may be some pattern and some person they can find who was involved. They run into The Collector, the self important James Alcock who dislikes Boyd instantly. It could be because in every episode there is someone who dislikes Boyd instantly or it could be that as the person overseeing cargo tax collection at Heathrow he may have been complicit in the robberies. Alcock says that sometimes he suspects that there are false theft reports for insurance reasons and thus does not waste his efforts in trying to find out what happened.

Boyd has a visit from two representatives of Certil. (ed. note, it could very well be that Certil is spelled Sertil, I think Boyd had a business card in one scene but his thumb was over the operative letter. C fits better for my purposes. I'll use both spellings to keep things interesting.) They say that they represent clients who lost property and they are hoping to recover it. They are a very secretive pair. It is unlcear exactly what they do and for whom. it is also something of a mystery how they knew what Boyd was investigating. Perhaps they have a souce at Heathrow. They give Boyd some photographs of men who they believe could be capable of pulling off the 1998 robbery.

Nadir Mehta's body is exhumed. It is pretty gross, but given that after having his throat slit and his hands chopped off his corpse was raised to a water tower where vultures attacked it, things could be worse. Felix discovers that Nadir's throat was cut after he was dead.

Boyd takes a ride on a double decker to discuss Spence's situation with his inside man. This is interesting because the only other person we have seen ride a double decker is Spence when he met up with his Mum in Final Cut. They must keep the fact that Spence is a cop a secret and they cannot do that for long if any of the guards find out. They actually don't mention the other prisoners, it is just important that the staff not know a cop is in prison undercover.

Boyd realizes that if Nadir's throat was cut after he was dead, then Sarosh did not kill his brother. I'm not sure why he doesn't say that perhaps he did kill him but in a different way than his story. Felix says that Cripsy Duck was tortured before he was killed.

In their prison cell, Sarosh tells Spence that "if there is good in his heart then all will be well." Is that a threat or a promise? Spence reveals his identity to Sarosh and tells him they can help him. Sarosh says that Druj is evil and stronger than him. He seems very afraid of something.

Boyd tells Andy that Spence is in prison for assaulting him. It is a different type of torture that he inflicts on her. You might think being able to trust your fellow officer was an important element of police work, however, tf you think that then you have not spent nearly enough time with Peter Boyd.

They bring Nadir's widow, Roshni Mehta, into the office for the usual questioning. Felix pulls Boyd out of the interview to tell him that Nadir had been poisoned. She cannot say whether it was an attempt to kill him or not.Also that the Mehta's had a son who died 3 months after Nadir. They were buried in the same grave. Boyd wants to know if the son had also been poisoned. Mrs. Mehta does not want them desecrating her son's grave. In another Frankie-like conflict, Boyd wants Felix to overlook the ethical considerations to help solve the case. Felix says no. Apparently she means it because Boyd is alone when he goes on his grave robbing expedition.

Spence connects with Sarosh. Sarosh, who was also a baggage handler at Heathrow, tells him that Nadir had been involved in cargo theft where they would take things and sneak them out through the employee entrance. Nadir wanted to go straight for the sake of his young son. Sarosh told Nadir he needed to purify himself. Sarosh says he cannot say who killed Nadir because they will kill his family. Sarosh says he needs to purify himself and he has prayed for a messenger. He thinks Spence is the answer to his prayers. Sarosh tells Spence the key is for him to find the Midnight Pearl. Sarosh says a prayer and retires to the top bunk. Later that night, as Spence sleeps in the lower bunk, drops of blood rain softly down upon him.

Being the only other person in a locked prison cell with a guy who has bled to death is problematic. Boyd's contact says that the best course of action is for Boyd to arrest Spence for murder. It is the quickest way of getting Spence out of there without letting on that an undercover cop has been in the prison. Felix is called in to process the scene and lest anyone out there is thinking she isn't a quick study, the first thing does when she meets Spence, is to have him disrobe.

Felix says that Sarosh committed suicide. Boyd gives her some hairs that presumably he removed from the Mehta's child grave. Felix is not happy but Boyd counts on her to do what he wants.

They meet up with D.C.I. Chowdray from India. He says that the body in the plane from Arizona is a Detective Sargeant and his nephew Sharma. Chowdry asks to spend a few moments with the body and performs a ritual while Andy observes from nearby.

Chowdray says that Sharma was investigating a Mr. Irani and followed him to England, he was never seen again. Irani is one of the names mentioned by Claire Yardley, the Certil (Sertil) representative. Boyd says they are investigating Irani as well as the Midnight Pearl. Chowdray offers the information that the Midnight Pearl is a trading company established by Irani. Boyd must not trust Chowdray because he begins tapping on his desk like a madman, also because he has Spence follow him to his hotel.

It seems that one thing that the victims have in common is their religion, they are all Parsees, also known as Zoroastrians, a religious grouping in India. The Parsees carry their dead to towers where the bodies are laid around a pit to be eaten by vultures. Dead bodies are believed to be unpure and thus cannot pass through soil or fire for fear of polluting the earth. A kusti, a sacred cord, is tied around the body. Chowdray tied one around Sharma's body and Felix believes remnants of one were found around Nadir's body. Based on this, Boyd surmises that Sharma's body was placed in the plane because for the person trying to conceal the murder, it was the closest thing to a high altitude burial where the corpse would be exposed to the elements. It also means that the person hiding the corpse was not necessarily the person who made the corpse.

Andy contributes to the group by posing the question of why Chowdray went through another ritual burial when one had already been performed on the body. Plus, only certain Parsee perform the ritual and they live outside normal society. Chowdray is a police officer so he does not live outside normal society and so he must also not be someone who should perform the ceremony. Perhaps he did not know or he did it just for their benefit.

Boyd decides to offer himself to Certil by way of Claire Yardley. He tells her he is looking for a change. He says there is a lot going on with him now which we can understand to mean that he just lost his junior officer, but we never hear him explain about Mel to Claire. Conceivably, it is true that Boyd might want to jump ship and try to make a lot of money but somehow it is just not that convincing.

Spence had trailed Chowdray to a vast underground facility or warehouse. He calls Boyd and they meet up in the dust filled place, crates of shirts and other goodies are scattered about the structure. In one corner, they discover a mini pharmaceutical lab. They bring Felix in, who identifies the boxes of pills as anti-AIDS, anti-cancer, painkillers - serious prescription drugs. The boxes bear the label "Irani's Midnight Pearl." It seems they have everything to pass off the fake drugs as the real deal except for bar codes and holographic markers. This would be fine for the Third World but would never pass muster in the Western market. In response to counterfeiting large pharmaceutical companies had begun using countermeasures such as holograms in the late 1980's ( I looked that up, eventually I'll get around to adding sources).

An appropriately timed flash back lets us in on the fact that Mrs. Mehta had given her son some medicine way back when. Felix tells Boyd that she has the tox screen results on Mrs. Mehta's son. She says she found traces of potassium dichromate, bad stuff that should not be ingested or absorbed by humans, in his hair. It is the same substance that she found in Nadir, his father. As for the pharmaceuticals they found in the warehouse, they were largely made up of chalk but some of the antibiotics also contained potassium dichromate, possibly from contaminated water. Felix is miffed that Boyd does not thank her properly or at all. Poor dear, how is she to know that feeling underappreciated by Boyd is the only badge of honor she'll get from the cold case squad.

Boyd's next Sertil recruitment meeting is at lunch with Claire, Noel and Jeremy Allen. Someone watches intently from a distance, later we find out that it is Spence. Boyd tries to get them to tell him just what they want from him. They tell him they would like him to keep his job as a police officer while also working for them. They say they are concerned with the counterfeiting of their products and with maintaining their reputation and consumer confidence. Exposing wide spread counterfeiting would undermind consumer confidence. Hypothetically, the Heathrow robbery would have been a bonus for Certil because it meant the counterfeiters could not produce packaging that could see in the Western markets. Claire calls it problem solving, hypothetically. Hypothetically or not, Spence appears at the table to ruin someone's lunch.

At the office, Mrs. Mehta makes another visit. They tell her about the bad drugs. Nadir told his wife that the prescription drugs were good but that they had the wrong price on them. They stored them in their apartment and she sold them to people if they didn't have their own doctor. She even gave her husband some of the pills for his bronchitis. She gave some of the antibiotics to her son when he got the flu. Later he became worse and died, like his father. Mrs. Mehta now has to face the horrible truth that she gave deadly poison to her husband and child.

Boyd catches up with Chowdray. He says he is annoyed that Boyd searched his room, it is a breach of trust. Boyd says he had him followed but he did not search his room, mostly he wants to know why he went after Irani. Chowdray says he had an address and did not know whether it would lead him to Irani or not. Irani is a Parsees and he can redeem himself through good deeds such as properly tending to dead bodies. Boyd tells him that they are looking for Irani in connection with two murders or perhaps thousands. He shows him the fake drugs.

Rexit, Europe has lawyered up. Boyd accuses them outright of engineering the 1998 armed robbery at Heathrow. Jeremy admits that in markets with low margins they cannot afford to spend money on security. Rexit contracted with Sertil to deal with counterfeiter Irani. They negotiated with Irani but failed to take into account his uncontrollability.

Boyd (don't ask me why) determines that the Controller, Alcock searched Chowdray's room. Grace adds that not needing a warrant is a powerful thing. Not caring if you have a warrant is even more powerful, where has she been all these years? Anyway, the big mystery is why would Customs and Excise be so interested in a guy who has come just to claim his nephew's body? Of course they wouldn't be, so there must be something else going on with Chowdray.

Boyd, Spence and Andy travel over to Chowdray's room to do a little B&E, about that warrant... Boyd finds Chowdray's police identification which turns out to be a fake. Weird that they never even made a phone call to confirm Chowdray's story but maybe without Mel they have to skip some of their detective work. They decide that since Chowdray follows Irani all over the world and since they only know what Irani looks like from a photo from Certil, maybe Chowdray is really Irani.

Chowdray, now also known as Mr. Irani, is over at Mrs. Mehta's pretending to be someone else. He says he is a priest who heard about her tragedy and came to offer assistance. News travels slow. Her husband and child died in 1998.. She explains what happened and adds that the drugs came from Irani. She says that Irani is corrupt and evil. Mrs. Mehta asks if he has come to take her body to the Towers of Silence. Chowdray/Irani does not reply. Mrs. Mehta has unwittingly or wittingly let Irani know that she knows that he was involved in drug counterfeiting and murder.

It turns out that Alcock put a tracking device on Chowdray. That's excessive but it proves useful. The team rushes to a tall building. They find Mrs. Mehta dead on the roof. Considerate murderer Irani has placed another body high up where it can be attacked by all the vultures in the middle of London. At the airport, Irani has booked a flight. They hurry to find him. Boyd finds him sitting with his eyes closed in the smoking section. Okay, he is also Dead. Just then Boyd spots his Certil friends. It would have been no effort for them to find Irani and murder him.

Irani was a loose end and trouble in general. Not sure why it took them this long to wrap him up. It could be that for the past seven years he had been hiding out in India. That's unclear. He killed D.S. Sharma because he was on his trail for counterfeiting and murder. Not sure why no one followed up on Sharma's disappearance or investigation. Sorash Mehta confessed to killing his brother so there was no need to investigate Nadir's death. Sorash confessed to keep his family safe. Nadir Mehta died from ingesting the poisoned antibiotics. His throat was slit and his hands chopped off to disguise the cause of death. Mrs. Mehta had to die because she knew about Nadir. As for the role played by Certil, their clients and the Collector, well that seems to be the makings of another cold case.