Waking The Dead : What Happened and Why in
Wounds

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It is not wounds of the flesh that do in the players of this week's outing, but instead it is more the emotional and mental trauma that beset them.

The cold case is the murder of Chris Dearden. The episode begins with lots of quick cuts showing Dearden and some other men sitting and talking and other times running through the woods in a semi-savage display, sticks, blindfolds mud. The images conjure up some sort of notion about rituals and primal behavior, but in the end it is all about their fears and their varying ability to deal with them. There are some Wren Boys elements to the scenes, but the ending is even less dramatic than Wren Boys.

Dearden's corpse was found in an underground hideout in the woods. He had been tied to a post and his fingertips had been severed. Dr. Eve said that the cause of death were blows to the head. Eve must have arrived on scene hours before the rest of the squad because she has it scouted out and set up for Grace to watch on camera as she and Boyd crawl into the underground chamber.

They find the skeleton in an upright position and it stays that way for the duration of the episode. I'm not really sure what's keeping it that way since the stuff that keeps bones attached seems to have all gone the way of all flesh. Fortunately, Dearden's credit card is still intact because that is how they identify him, confirmed by his dental records.

Dearden went missing on May 24th 1996. The original investigation concluded that Dearden committed suicide because he had been drinking and depressed. His story of going to Africa on business was known to be phony because he left his passport in a garden shed at home.

Josh Findlay, Harold Bloom, and Michael Hurst are the other men in Dearden's camping party and each is experiencing odd flashbacks. Perhaps they sense that Dearden's body has been found. It's never really explained. Let's just say that guilt and stress can drive a man to wake the dead.

Grace and Boyd drop in on Dearden's widow to deliver the news. Lucy Dearden is now involved with Frank Monk. Grace somehow concludes that the two of them were having an affair while Chris Dearden was still alive. Lucy does not deny it. The Dearden's have one child a son, Jimmy who is now a teenager. Seems to be a good lad, unlike someone else's son. Jimmy worshipped his dad and has trouble accepting that he didn't die in some exotic place for some exotic reason.

Spence and Stella track down people who may have known about the tunnels. We missed the first 11 places they visited and catch up with them for number 12. Protester number 12 happens to be Harold Bloom, who we recognize as being one of Dearden's woods buddies. Bloom owns a record store. He also seems to be stoned most of the time. Bloom and the others each receive a hand delivered letter that frightens them. The wind seems to frighten them so it shouldn't be a surprise that the letters are letters they have written to themselves send them into a tizzy. The frightening part, I guess, is that on the envelope are the words, "It is time to pay" written in some sort of red stuff, probably not blood. It does make one wonder if the napkin note Boyd received ostensibly from Joe Luke was something he sent to himself.

Jimmy shows up in the office and wants to see his father's body. Grace thinks it's a good idea to convince him that his father is dead. Boyd takes the position that Jimmy should remember his father the way he was and not as some bag of bones. Don't bother re-reading this, I haven't mistyped the names. Yes, Boyd is the one advocating sensitivity and Grace is going for shock value, although she says it is the only way to start the grieving process. Dare I wonder what brought this about.

Eve discovers that Dearden was suffering from osteoporosis. She also finds a locket filled with some sort of powder. It's surprising that she has to send the powder away for analysis. Surely, she can just taste it to identify it.  But since it turns out to be an aphrodisiac maybe she should just leave it alone.

Frank gets into a heated argument with Victor Coleridge, it ends with Coleridge decking Frank. Coleridge is Jimmy's boss at a youth gym. Jim works in a gym.  Coleridge is very upset that Jimmy went to see his father's remains. Frank goes home and burns all of Chris's possessions. The bonfire thing happens a lot. In Every Breath You Take, James Britten burned his wife's things after her body had been found. Boyd manages to rescue a few bits from the ashes. He meets up with Jimmy in the garden shed for a quiet chat.

Chris told his son that he was working with a group of mercenaries called the Awkward Squad. They went on secret missions. The Awkward Squad was a pub quiz team. Same thing. In those flashbacks that look as if Dearden is being interrogated as some sort of prisoner of war, he's really trying to brainstorm with his quiz buddies about an answer.

Frank says he burned Dearden's stuff to help Jimmy move on. Frank seems to be competing with both the ghost of Chris Dearden and Coleridge to be Jimmy's father, but Frank is still coming in third, fourth if you toss in Boyd.

Frank drops the important clue that Coleridge knew Dearden.

The team or rather Grace is trying to make sense of the evidence that is pointing towards a ritualistic killing. Dearden was tied up, a tin of sardines was left with his body and his killers scalped him to remove part of his brain. Grace suggests it may be a Nigerian ritual killing. It's not.

What if anything Dearden did in Africa is a bit of convoluted goo. Stella and Spence do determine that when Dearden returned to London he always had the same taxi driver, none other than record store owner, Harold Bloom. Bloom is as cooperative as he was earlier, this time not being able to remember what kind of car he drove back then. He provides Spence with a string of non-answers.

Stella uncovers more connections when she finds out that Findlay interceded on Dearden's behalf when Dearden had been arrested in Nigeria. Bloom has nothing on Findlay when it comes to evading questions from the Cold Case Squad. He claims not to know Dearden or remember why he paid to have him released from Nigeria.

Three of the remaining Awkward Squad get together in Findlay's car for a quick session. Bloom is panicked because of his police interviews. Findlay and Hurst hide their stress better. A bike messenger delivers a package to the car - that can't be normal. Findlay opens the package and the trio of manly men leap from the car in fear when they see the contents. It's part of Dearden's brains. Bloom sprints away.

Eve, Boyd and Grace speculate whether Dearden was impotent after Eve finds that the locket powder is crushed rhino horn. Grace says it must not work since his wife was having an affair. At least we know what Grace thinks will guarantee a happy marriage. They also go through a litany of stuff about soil and orchids which leads to the conclusion that the murder was unplanned.

Grace proves herself to be the best interviewer of the bunch when she drives Lucy Dearden to tears and forces her to discuss her sex life. Later, Lucy confesses that Chris had phoned Jimmy on the night he disappeared. He left a message saying he loved his son and he wanted to make things better in the future. Frank erased the message before Jimmy could hear it.

Lucy provides another clue when she gives the team a greeting card Chris had received about being horny. The card was made up by Michael Hurst. Hursty carries on the Awkward Squad tradition of non-answers answers.  No wonder they sucked at pub quizzes.

Eve turns her attention to some of the papers Boyd rescued from Frank's bonfire. On the top of a pub quiz page are the letters "A.S." and the C.C.S. discovers that the Awkward Squad is a pub quiz team. Handwriting analysis will identify the team members. Boyd brings Bloom, Hurst and Findlay in for another reunion.

Boyd turns into Quizmaster and has a little fun with the guys. Bloom starts to lose it first. But as with their last meeting, we know none of the three are what you might call mentally stable. Boyd shows them before and after photographs of Dearden, but it is unclear whether the interview produces any solid facts.

Grace advances her ritual killing theory further West and pegs the Navajo as the origin of the ritual. Pretty soon Grace may come to realize that the killers had no idea what they were doing and were pulling stuff out of their rears. Finding a pattern or real meaning, isn't going to happen.

After some actual police work, Stella finds where Dearden placed the call to Jimmy.  Eve, Spence and Stella trek out to the woods to excavate the site near the phone booth. Fortunately, in twelve years only the Awkward Squad has left any evidence of having been there. Is it that no one wanted to hike or camp within walking distance of a phone box?

Bloom goes home to freak out some more. This time he freaks all the way out and cuts off his own fingertips. A lot of people might pass out from the pain, but Bloom goes out to the boxing club. Only when he returns home to have more Dearden walking hallucinations does he finally succumb. Spence finds his body duct taped to a chair and half his skull carved off. I suspect foul play.

Hurst is lurking about in the street when the rest of the team arrives at Bloom's store, now a crime scene. He scurries off before he is spotted.

Eve determines that Bloom died from a heart attack, but she cannot be certain whether the scalping caused the heart attack or whether he died first and then someone tried to remove a section of his brain. She does know that Bloom removed one set of his fingertips but after he was dead someone else removed his the tips from his other hand. Eve also said something about being able to identify a specific rock that Bloom leaned against which burned him in 1996. Really? Really really?

Bloom leads the team to Coleridge because Bloom called Coleridge's youth/boxing club just before he died. Coleridge is an American who served in the army, he says to be like his father a career military man. Yet, Coleridge's army days were not as successful. A man died under his command in an ambush in Mogadishu. It turns out he was a member of the Navajo nation and Coleridge is haunted by the man's ghost. It's kind of like Duty and Honour, if James Malham had been the one to survive. Apparently, he is a victor in name only; Grace determines that Coleridge is dangerous because he has unknown demons. Coleridge says that Bloom was a small time drug dealer, that may be, but it isn't why he was calling the club.

Eve, Grace and Boyd make a trip out to the body farm's sweat tent. Grace says you can use it to purge mental toxins. Boyd asks how you purge mental toxins. I say, don't ask how Boyd, just get in the tent and sweat, sweat, I say.   If we're lucky we'll never have another mention of Joe Luke.

The team recovers Bloom's and Findlay's self discovery letters. Meanwhile, Findlay is flipping out in a diplomatic session at his office. By the time Stella comes to bring him in for questioning, he's muttering to himself. At the office, he tells Boyd that the Awkward Squad always struggled to answer questions until they hooked up with Coleridge, when they finally won.

Commando Coleridge had the idea for the wilderness weekend. Coleridge gave them something to drink which they euphemistically call peyote. Real peyote or not, it gets them high. The Awkward Squad behave like idiots or their idea of real men. Although the biggest bit of idiocy comes when Coleridge tosses Bloom's car keys into the woods. It would be a major inconvenience, but for the telephone in walking distance.

Boyd grills Findlay derisively for awhile and then sends him on his way. The problem is that Findlay should not be left alone. Hurst is in one of the holding cells and he should not be alone either and hallucinations don't count as company (Boyd!).

At the club, Boyd runs into Jimmy who says he wishes they had never found that body. He's talking about either his father or Bloom, I'm talking about Luke.

Michael's wife, Louise comes in to do the wifely thing and reveal all about her husband. We learn Grace does not believe that children are an essential part to having a happy marriage, that's because we already know performance is what counts. Fidelity is not a key component for the Hursts because Michael uses prostitutes and violent pornography to relieve stress.

While Stella and Spence share a cup of coffee outside of Findlay's office, Findlay dies. Weren't these two on surveillance duty when a woman was killed in Undertow? Sure, it is an unfair comparison, but that's not stopping me.

Findlay gets drunk and calls Grace. He breathes heavily into the phone and Grace knows that it is him. Soulmates? Findlay has a heart attack and dies.

Boyd reckons they had better get Hurst out of his cell before he's the third Awkward Squad member who has a heart attack. Grace says the heart attacks are due to being haunted.

Boyd gets Hurst to tearfully confess that during the wilderness outing, Coleridge had them fighting. Dearden ran away to the phone and Hurst, Bloom and Findlay chased after him. Hurst, apparently forgetting the other witnesses are dead, confesses that he pulled the phone receiver out and bludgeoned Dearden. Findlay and Bloom helped pull Dearden out of the booth but Hurst was the killer.

Hurst blames Coleridge for telling them if they went through some pseudo ceremonial motions that Dearden wouldn't be able to come back to get them. he says Coleridge couldn't even get that right.

Coleridge told Jimmy how his father died. Grace goes to see Jimmy's mother and Frank. Lucy ends up in tears. They wonder what has become of Jimmy. A light goes on, it's not an idea, it's Jimmy in the shed. Grace goes out to speak with him. As part of Jimmy's memories of his dad, he remembers Bloom being his driver. Bloom said he was part of the Awkward Squad would keep Chris safe. After Bloom showed up at the club, Jimmy followed him. He says he only wanted to talk to him but Bloom lunged towards him and Jimmy punched him. Scared, Jimmy went to Coleridge for help, who promptly made a mess of the body.

All is well when Grace gets Jimmy to read the letter Chris wrote saying he had to tell his son that he loved him.

For the rest of us, the ending is not so good. Boyd walks alone down the office corridor. Eve is waiting for him. Boyd can tell from her face that something is wrong. Eve says, "your son." Boyd replies: "Luke, his name is Luke." You keep telling yourself that bub, I'm sure if you say it enough, it'll be true. She says it was an overdose. It seems Luke Boyd is now as dead as Joe Boyd. Long live Joe Luke! We are subjected to a Joe Luke Boyd montage. Pass the peyote.