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Missing Persons

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Missing Persons gives us a rare glimpse inside Detective Superintendent Peter Boyd's personal life. It is so rare that the writers apparently cannot remember anything of the last time we had a glimpse into his personal life, specifically the disappearance of his son. But first we see Boyd with Sarah, who we met in the sixth series. Sarah works for Mossad, Israeli's intelligence agency and doesn't seem to have a last name. As Yarzheit ended we saw Boyd and Sarah kissing in New York. This time the pair is back in London and Sarah is catching a plane back to New York. The relationship is still unsettled in that they both confess that they are deeply committed to their work. Some of us remember from Blind Beggar, that when Boyd's son was young, Boyd was more committed to work than he was to his family. He believed it was the reason his son would run away from home, why he turned to petty crime and why he eventually was presumed to have been killed in a knife fight.

Normally, we would just note this as a "Joe Boyd Moment" and move on. This week we get something much more. At the office, Dr. Eve Lockhart informs Boyd that the Homeless Unit are holding a young man suffering from memory loss. After a dna test, the only thing they conclude is to call Boyd. Eve notes there is no record of any corresponding case. But surely, if this is really Boyd's missing son, he would have an open missing persons case. Is it really conceivable that there was never a formal investigation into the whereabouts of his son? Really?

The main case consuming the Cold Case Squad this week is Case 27B. It is the corpse of a 19 year old woman who had been shot to death then burned in a cargo container. The case comes to the forefront when a guy tries to snatch a young woman's purse at a train station. Unfortunately for teen mugger, her mother is Lore duTana Carson, she's like a legend, only different. Lore deals with the mugger with a series of swift martial arts moves. The guy ends up on the third rail. Lore grabs a wooden broom stick and pushes muggerboy to safety. She then performs cpr on him. Too bad for Lore, this takes place before the latest guidelines saying chest compressions are sufficient. Lore performs mouth to mouth. She saves his life but flees the scene before the authorities arrive. In the process of identifying the mugger, the police test his dna. Lore's dna is mixed in and they match Lore's dna to dna found on chains at the scene of 27B's murder. Are dna tests really performed so perfunctorily? They couldn't wait for mugger to regain consciousness to ask him his name? Who is paying for all of that rapid testing?

The Cold Case Squad concludes that Lore was a witness or the killer in case 27B. Except they ignore that there is no way to say that the dna on the chains was left at the same time of the murder. Also found at the scene and only now identified by Lockhart is the remnants of a videotape case. D.I. Spencer Jordan concludes that since the area is known for prostitution that they were making snuff films. Poor Spence, why is it that only his baseless conclusions turn out to be red herrings?

The opening scenes are apparently meant to add to the red herring snuff film theory. We first see a young woman standing in a deserted area and then get into a car with a middle aged man. She looks like a prostitute and he looks like a john. That much is correct. We then see a woman bound and gagged and hanging by her wrists inside one of the cargo containers. This is not the prostitute. This is Lore in the summer of 1993. The prostitute is Rose Delaney, who is now a dental assistant. She called the police when she saw the cargo container in flames.

The mugger plays a vital role in this story. He is the link between the cold case 27B and Joe Luke. Apparently, homeless teen mugger, now identified as Andrew Lloyd, bears a resemblance to Joe Luke. We know Joe had run ins with the law, Luke seems to have had problems as well. While interviewing Andrew, Boyd badgers him about his mother. If you are still not making the missing son connections, Boyd and Dr. Grace Foley go to visit the burned out container. It is still just as it was 15 years ago, there isn't even any trash inside the container. In what otherwise would be a random and pointless scene, they encounter street kids. One of them says, she can always spot a dad looking for his kid.

Concerned about the news coverage of the train incident, Lore announces to her husband, Stephen, that she is returning to France with her two daughters. Her husband seems to have no say in the matter. Unfortunately for Lore, Boyd has the police block off all ports of exit and they are circulating her picture all about. Can the cold case squad really command this sort of effort for a murder that took place over 15 years ago? Didn't Grace make a point of saying that the victim, like the place, were deemed unimportant.

Lore's rescue the mugger story is a human interest hit, and reaches the news in Ireland where a bar maid takes note. The bar maid is no stranger. She turns out to be Una Doyle. She and Lore go way back. Una has been looking for Lore, but she could not have put much effort into it since Lore isn't really all that common of a name.

Rose comes into the office for an interview. Boyd is dumbfounded that a former prostitute could have turned her life around. He has Grace conduct the interview because he is afraid of upsetting her progress. Rose explains that she met an Algerian pimp called B.B. and she saw his car around the time the cargo container was in flames.

B.B. is not just a pimp, he is also a terrorist in hiding. There is a death sentence awaiting B.B. if he returns to Algeria. Boyd understands that no European country will deport him. Apparently, B.B. has friends in high places. Later we find that B.B. has friends in the CIA and MI-5. He is also friends with Una Doyle who comes to visit him at his club. Una threatens him by saying if he betrays her, she will cut off his balls and put them in a blender. It's an odd threat since after she castrates him, what does he care what happens with the parts she has already cut off. Una sounds like a big talker, but not a big thinker.

Una also visits Stephen. She ties him to a chair, runs a wire from the front doorbell and puts the wire into a bucket of gasoline (petrol) next to Stephen. Boyd and Spence go to question Stephen, smell the petrol and break open the door. Stephen tells them that he and Lore have been married 10 years. Terese is not his biological child and Lore has never spoken about Terese's father.

Lore and the girls go into hiding in a cheap hotel in Kings Cross. Lore then goes to see Brahim the pimp for help in getting out of the country. She seems to know him very well. She, like Una is interested in his body parts, but seemingly for different uses. She also later says to him, if you betray me, but she ends it only with "I'll get you."

The team is completely stumped by this case. There are just too many nationalities for them. Algerian, Irish, French, Palestinian. Grace realizes that in 1992 of the players, except Frenchwoman Lore, were from places that were under military occupation. Fortunately, Lockhart determines that Lore is really Basque, and for no reason they decide this is synonymous with Eta.

In October of 1992, Lore and Brahim were arrested crossing the French Spanish border. Brahim was identified as a member of the Islamic FIS party and more specifically he was wanted in connection with bombing of the Algerian airport in August of 1992. Borrowing a page from real life events, Brahim was convicted in abstentia and sentenced to death, he took up residence in Britain after living in France for a short while.

Una Doyle is or was a member of the Irish National Liberation Army. She was convicted of murder and served six years. In 1992, en route to planting a bomb she was ambushed, and her brother killed. The obvious thought is that Lore informed the authorities about Una in 1992 and now Una wants revenge.

Brahim had told Una where Lore was staying, he later explains that he did not know about the children, but how was he coming up with an exit strategy for them. Una takes the kids hostage. Lore spots the squad going into the hotel and calls the room. She speaks with Grace who seems oddly thrown by the call.

Lore recruited into terrorism after her father was murdered. He was something of a terrorist himself and his friends used her anger and grief to turn to terrorism. As a terrorist, she seemed to specialize in seducing old men.

In still yet another coincidence of showing up at the right time, the squad arrive at the club where Lore is holding Brahim at gunpoint. Boyd yells at Lore asking if she is a mother or a killer? Not sure why you cannot be both, but it works on Lore and she drops the gun. D.C. Stella Goodman smacks Brahim around a bit.

Una shares some memories with Terese. She says that Lore killed their sister. We later learn her name was Fatima. Una then recounts the good old days when the three of them met at the Acme Summer Terrorist Training Camp for Young Ladies, an equal ideology facility, located in sunny Libya. Just bring a desire to be free from occupation and for indigenous self determination. Pain and torture will be supplied by Qadhafi's camp counselors.

Una no doubt picked up her fair share of merit badges at the camp. As she builds a bomb, she shows that she has kept her terrorist instincts and knows that Terese is hiding a screwdriver up her sleeve. She tells the young girl that the best way to kill is to stab the screwdriver through the ear drum.

So um, torture? Is that okay now for the squad? In a scenario very similar to what Una inflicted upon Stephen, Boyd has Stella, French Stella, tie BB up in a cell and she says that one of his bombs maimed her cousin when she was eight years old. Stella then pulls out a small section of sandpaper and intimates that she is going to mutilate his face. Boyd interrupts and calls her out of the room. He then begins his interrogation. Are Stella and Boyd playing good cop, insane cop? You decide which one is which.

Brahim eventually starts to confess that he was a informant for the CIA. The CIA shared the information with various security groups around the world, including MI-5. After Boyd flips him out of a chair, steps on him and tells him Stella is going to come back to sand his face off, Brahim cooperates. Brahim calls Una to meet with Lore at the club. Una straps a belt of explosives around Terese for the occasion.

Una, showing off more of her terrorist skills, knows enough to know that Boyd is going to have someone back him up with a gun. Boyd calls Spence out of the shadows but Boyd is no slouch when it comes to anti-terrorism skills, Spence was merely the decoy to fool Una into believing she was in control. Stella is the real back up.

So who killed Fatima? According to Lore, when Fatima rescued her from Una, she told her that she was going to blow up a plane to Tel Aviv. Fatima was going to use her baby to sneak the bomb onboard. Fatima wanted Lore to deliver a videotape explaining her reasons. Fatima told Lore to kill Brahim but instead Lore shot Fatima. Lore took the baby and Brahim set fire to the cargo container and Fatima became case 27B. Too bad the videotape burned, it would have helped out with Lore's murder trial. Otherwise who is to say that Lore didn't just kill Fatima to steal her child. The only witness is Brahim the pimp.

Bringing together people from different backgrounds served to increase the mystery in that we could not say immediately how or why they were together. Also it took away the focus from the specific demands of any one group and gave a more general look at why a young woman would engage in terrorism. It didn't do a very good job with this, but the potential is there.

What is there to say about the Joe Luke story? Nothing good. Earlier Boyd had looked in on Joe Luke at the institution. He has some flashbacks of a little kid playing happily, then of an angry teen shouting he hated him. He returns to the institution and finds that Joe Luke has checked himself out. If it doesn't turn out to be some sort of mental break that Boyd is experiencing, ala Life on Mars, then I don't want to know anything about it.

Sarah phones and leaves a message on Boyd's answering machine saying that she loves him. Sure she does, either that or the thought that he has found his son makes her feel that either he won't have any time for her and he'll be the one to break things off or maybe she's jealous and wants to claim her territory.

Theoretically Joe Luke was the missing person, but I think it was Spence, with the others being in disguise. Spence has a few lines here and there, but he doesn't have much of a role. Eve had some bizarre moments where she is trying to stop smoking, but it is just random. Stella the budding terrorist had some presence, but I'm not sure it was really Stella. Grace moped. Hopefully the team will be back next week.