Waking The Dead : What Happened and Why in
Pieta

Who Was That?   |   Episode Summary  |   Talk About it in the Forum

And so we have reached the final episode in another series of Waking the Dead. Once again we'll focus mostly on the cold case storyline but don't worry, since the Joe Luke storyline dragged out throughout the series, I'll do a special whatwhy just for Joe Luke Bpyd and for series 7 overall.

Pieta begins with a flashback of the Vaspovic family in distress. Dr. Jasnl Vaspovic is trying to get back to Serbia with her mother and her two children, Pera and Anna. Things end tragically for them as we see Jasnl cradling the corpse of her son, Pera, in a grave somewhere in the Bosnian woods.

In the present, Anna is now all grown up and working in a hospital lab. On her way out for the day, covertly, she slips something into her bag. Anna seems to have a friendly relationship with maintenance worker, Max Fowler and an even friendlier relationship with Serbian, Josif Gorvodic. Max is an assumed name, his real name is Jovan Petropecic and he is an old family friend. You know the saying, with friends like that who needs deranged bogeymen.

In one of those twists of fate that just should never happen on television, someone swipes Pera's handbag. The same handbag into which she had slipped someone unknown substance from the lab. That's not the unforgiveable bit, unforgiveable is that Hunny, one of the homeless kids from Missing Persons steals the bag.

Stevan Steznovic and Josif witness the theft and chase after Hunny. Our first clue that all is not as it seems is when Stevan is hit by a car and Josif beats the passing police officers who stop to help. Josif and Stevan run off.

Dr. Eve Lockhart gets a storyline, well not really, but close enough for the newest new girl. In 1996, she went to Bosnia to excavate mass graves. One in particular caught her attention because there were only two people in it. DNA tests confirm that the woman and boy in the grave were mother and son. Lockhart also collects some blood samples left by three unknown males on the mother's shawl. This will be important later because it will help her to identify witnesses to the murders. Lockhart tells Boyd that she added the information from the gravesite to the cold case database and it was triggered by the men who ran off after the altercation with the police officers.

How the heck does the Met have jurisdiction over the killing of two Serbians in Bosnia? Yes, the men who assaulted two police officers are connected to the crime in Bosnia, but they have cctv footage of them and they hang out on that street all the time. Just arrest them the next time they go to the cafe.

The team gathers for a review of life in Bosnia. Helped along with Vaspovic family flashbacks we learn that although the mother was wearing a shawl typicaly worn by local Muslim women, the boy had not been circumcized, which he would have if he were Muslim. When you realize that the answer is that the shawl did not belong to the womann, you have to wonder how any of these cases ever get solved. Lockhart speculates that the pair were from a middle class background and were living in a nearby overflow areas. She notes that the areas were not really safe because women and children were loaded onto buses by Serbs.

Boyd critiques Lockhart by saying that she is sentimentalizing and personalizing the incident. I think that means something like she is letting her emotions rule her judgment. It is probably just his way of saying, I've been there, I've done that. And by golly he'll do it again next series. Hopefully, otherwise millions wouldn't know which show they were watching.

Boyd asks Grace to join him in his office and one might suspect he will tell her that his long lost recently found son Joe Luke is waiting for someone to sign him out of the morgue, but no, he asks if she recognizes street urchin Hunny on the cctv footage. The video is a blur of someone running. Since Hunny was able to spot that Boyd was a man looking for his son, it is only natural that Boyd can distinguish Hunny from a blur. Then again, Boyd has always had a thing for barely legal girls (Thin Air), maybe this has nothing to do with Joe Luke.

Anna's father tries to get her to spill info on the new guy she has been seeing. Anna thinks not. Milan ask accusingly if he is a Serb. Anna says, he is and it is no big deal because they are all Serbs. Her father is not comforted and demands to know who the man is.

Another Vaspovic family flashback shows Milan trying to speak with his wife on the phone but their calls are cut off. A newsreport shows that the UN is losing control of their safe zones. Milan is home in Serbia. Jasnl was traveling when the Sarajevo airport was closed, now she must try to drive back.

In the present, Anna is in a cafe with her boyfriend Josif and his friend Stevan. They are trying to come up with a plan to deal with the theft of their sample. They did go through the effort of putting the drug sample in a container with a biological hazard symbol imprinted on it. If the authorities discovered it for whatever reason they would have the means to test it, so it wasn't in hiding from them. Thieves are stupid, so there's a good chance one would (and did) open it. I guess it was only being kept safe from an innocent person who might merely panic. In any event they need something to show their buyer. The cafe owner, Radovan Sredinic, has an idea if where they can find the purse snatcher. More important, Radov leads us into another set of flashbacks.

Radov was a soldier who met up with Pera and three of his friends who were hiding in the woods. Radov takes a particular interest in Pera and leads all the boys off to where they can find food.

Radov encounters Pera again after the Vaspovic's car is trapped at a road block constructed by Stevan, Josif and other soldiers. Jasnl tells Josif they are going to Belgrade where they live. Unfortunately, Jasnl's mother does not have travel papers. Using that as an excuse, Josif and the others pull Jasnl, her mother and the kids out of the car at gunpoint.

Grace tells Lockhart that the ballistics report shows that Jasnl and Pera were killed with handguns and not with AK-47's. They had assumed the murder weapons were AK-47's because those were the standard issue weapons in Bosnia. It is another clue that these killings were very different from what was going on elsewhere in the country. Or another clue that they make a lot of assumptions when solving a case.

The city mortuary calls Lockhart again about Joe Luke's body. Stella and Grace are still in the lab, Stella doing who knows what and Grace now looking at Lockhart suspiciously. Grace senses something is up, but she takes the passive aggressive route and says that she'll be in her office if anyone needs her. It would be just passive, but you know Grace isn't going to give it a rest.

It is time to interview Hunny. For reasons unknown to Boyd or me, Spence sticks the thief in Grace's office to chill out while waiting for them. Grace decides to conduct the interview and Boyd watches on closed circuit tv. Hold on a minute. Their offices are bugged? Sound and color video? Whose idea was that? Is it just Grace's office where she meets with people she fancies to be patients and gets them to confide their secrets whose office is bugged?

Anyway, Hunny who keeps referring to Boyd only as "the other one" seems to know all about Joe Luke's demise. Not only does she know all about Joe Luke, she seems to know that the office is bugged. Hunny says she will only speak to Boyd. Like the Wizard granting an audience to Dorothy, Boyd commands Grace to bring Hunny to his office.

Hunny's clairvoyant streak comes to a screeching halt when she pronounces Boyd to be "dead normal" and that he works 9 to 5 and gets his views from the evening news. The truth is that Boyd is guano loco, works 24/7 and gets his views from an as of yet undiscovered planet orbiting Proxima Centauri. In the first couple of series he used to get his opinions from Pluto, but once Pluto was demoted from planetary status he didn't want to know anything from there.

Hunny concludes by saying that the two men who chased her definitely were not with the handbag owner. Thanks, Hunny, be sure to drop off your cold case squad member application on the desk when you leave.

Boyd calls Stella in for her final babysitting task of the series: Tea with Hunny.

Lockhart is excited to share her discovery of traces of opium she found in Anna's handbag. A little too excited, if you know what I mean. She tells Boyd this is the stuff straight from the poppy fields. Boyd sniffs it, but really could you tell if Boyd were high? Later, Lockhart mentions that taking opium in this form would kill you. They try to imagine how much heroin it would take to fill the handbag. Lockhart estimates that ten kilos of pure opium produces one kilo of pure heroin which produces ten kilos of street heroin. The handbag wasn't filled with heroin, it was only a small jar.

Hunny says she think there was smack in the bag, but she isn't sure, her friend Steo is watching it now. Saying smack in the bag makes me laugh. I hope they do more drug stories next year. Unbeknownst to Hunny, Steo has been tracked down. Steo looks a bit wimpy, but he toughs it out pretty well against the hardened war criminals until they start threatening him with more flashbacks.

At the impromptu roadblock in Bosnia, Jasnl figures out they are doomed if she does not do something and tells the soldiers to contact Jovan Petropecic, because he knows them and will help. Meanwhile, the women are hearded onto a truck. Pera is grabbed and held by the soldiers. The ambush party is ambushed by soldiers in the woods. Lots of shooting and slow motion. The boys who were moments from execution do their best to get out of Dodge-evo.

Times haven't changed much. Stevan and Josif have captured a young man and aim a gun at him trying to get him to tell them where he has hidden the purse. Anna rushes in, aiming a gun at Stevan to stop them. Stevan reveals he was only bluffing and with no bullets, had no intention of shooting. It is an awkward setting saved only by the sound of Boyd's approaching car.

Boyd has arrived with Hunny in tow, I guess to look for Steo and the handbag. Boyd senses danger and locks Hunny into the car. He finds Steo cowering in a train well. I suppose Steo can be admired for not giving up any information, even in the face of death. The problem is that he's a thief and has no rights to the bag or its contents, so brave and valiant probably aren't the right adjectives either.

Surprisingly, the war criminals did not take too kindly to having a gun aimed at them by Anna. Unlike Steo, they were able to smack around their tormentor and worst of all to subject all involved to more flashbacks.

Future cafe owner, Radov, finds Jasnl and Anna shortly after Nana is killed. Jasnl takes her shawl. Radov tries to get her to flee with him, but Jasnl is intent on finding her child.

The vial of heroin is now in the hands of the Cold Case Squad. Lockhart analyzes it and finds it possibly was made from the batch of opium that was in the handbag. They speculte on where it could have been refined. Lab down the street, isn't one of the answers so let's skip it.

Steo hangs out to drop a clue in identifying his tormentors. One of them was wearing a gold chain with a spider decal. Boyd is so excited by the news he conjures up a flashback.

While Radov had been unsuccessful in collecting Jasnl, he was able to round up the boys who were lined up before the ambush, including Pera. When Pera reveals his surname, it produces some excitement such that they contact Petropecic and keep Pera apart from the other boys. Those boys are led out to dig graves.

Boyd explains his scorpion theory to the rest of the gang. The Scorpions were a particularly unsavory sect of the Serb militia. Grace says that the heroin owners are no doubt still getting ready to do whatever they were planning before the Girl, Interrupted them. For some reason they seem to think that Steo has given them a lot of information.

Grace playing hard to get has finally paid off when she gets a surprise visit by a desperate Eve. Not that Eve, Eve Lockhart. She comes to tell Grace she no longer wants the responsibility of dealing with Boyd over Joe Luke's death. Grace can't believe Luke is dead. I can't believe Luke was ever alive. Grace says she'll deal with it. I don't hold such high hopes.

The three detectives head over to St. Francis hospital because ... ? I missed how they figured out Anna's hospital. The first person they encounter is Petropecic busily mopping a floor. Spence shows him a picture of Anna and asks if he knows her. Petropecic says no. He then phones Anna to say that the police are looking for her. Maybe he misunderstood the question. While on his way to a personnel office (yeah right) Boyd stumbles upon Anna. She immediately identifies him as one of the cops looking for her and bolts in the other direction. They play hide and seek for a little bit. Boyd, in a sign of advanced age I guess, calls Spence on the phone to tell him to lock all the exits. It wasn't too long ago that Boyd would have just yelled really loudly to get Spences attention. No matter, I'm not sure how Spence is supposed to lock all the exits of the hospital anyway. For his troubles, Spence gets clunked on the head with a fire extinguisher by janitor war criminal.

Petropecic hits Spence hard enough to produce another flashback. This time we see how kindly war criminal has been protecting Anna since the day her mother, brother and grandmother were killed. Now, as then, he leads Anna to safety.

We manage to arrest Petropecic, and Spence seems to have recovered nicely. Technically, Spence should be allowed to torture Petropecic since Stella got a turn at Overton in Duty and Honour.

Grace tells Boyd she heard about Luke and she's upset that he excluded her. Anybody else remember that old song by Moving Pictures, "What About Me?" I don't know why but the lyrics suddenly flooded into my head, even if I had the artist wrong originally.

They toss Petropecic into a holding cell which triggers memories of medical doctor Jasnl agreeing to care for some of his fallen soldiers on the promise that they will find her son.

They trace a mobile number they found at Anna's workspace to cafe owner Radovan. It is apparently the last number she wrote down on a post it notepad. There is no satisfying explanation of why she wrote his number down on the notepad, except that it is an important clue that moves the story along. Spence believes Anna and Radov are not friends since she had to write his number down. Boyd counters by asking Spence if he knows all of his friend's nuumbers. Spence says no, but Spence's friends tend to be creeps. Boyd goes to the cafe and brings Radovan back to the office to answer questions and collect some dna. Boyd is suspicious of Radovan's rapid success. Radovan unwillingly admits that Anna and the two men come into his cafe. He claims not to know anything about them. He says he gave Anna his number after her bag was stolen and he wanted to stay in touch.

The three stooges are still trying to figure out how to carry on with their drug deal without their sample. Anna tries to move things along by saying they can cut out middleman Radovan and go straight to his contact. She mentions the name, Abdullah Akmodov and it sends the two men into a panic. boyfriend pulls a gun on her, she says she heard Radovan say the name but the two men don't believe her.

It is Anna's father, Milan's turn to appear in the office. Milan tells the story that his wife was trapped in Sarajevo and was trying to drive back to Belgrade. He never found out what happened to her or his son. Milan explains that it was not knowing what happened that was most painful. Milan says you cannot lay the dead to rest without a body. Truly an old school Joe Boyd moment.

In a warehouse, Anna is forced to confess that she is not innocent Veronica, but Anna Vaspovic who is investigating what happened to her mother. She knows they were part of the troop her mother encountered. She believes this Abdullah person is responsible for their deaths. boyfriend is upset that he was being used. Anna tries to convince him she had geniune feelings for him. They clue her in on the cruel joke that Akmodov is just a code name who became a myth. Stevan wants Josif to kill her.

Milan says that Petropecic deserted the army to save Anna. In exchange, Milan helped Jovan Petropecic to become Max Fowler.

The great plan is to exhcnage Anna for Radovan. Not to be outdone with crazy schemes, the cops working with Petropecic dream up a plan to convince Radovan that he is dying. Boyd leads Petropecic into Radovan's cell. Petropecic stabs Radovan with a hypodermic needle and tells him that he will die unless they administer an antidote. To get the antidote, Radovan must cooperate in capturing Josif and Stevan. In case you are wondering, yes this certainly should count as psychological torture.

Stellar Stella oversees the reunion of father and daughter Vaspovic while at the same time arrests Josif and Stevan at Radovan's cafe. Just from my perspective, this doesn't really count towards increasing Stella's airtime.

Anna finally gets to learn what happened to her mother and brother and of course there is no way she can be ready for the truth. She and her father watch behind the glass as Boyd interrogates Stevan. He starts off by showing the pictures of Jasnl and Pera's decayed corpses in the excavated grave. Stevan says that his blood is on Jasnl's shawl because Jasnl treated his gunshot wounds. Stevan and Josif were either trying to recruit or just torment Pera. They gave Pera a gun and told him to shoot three boys who were digging a grave. Pera refused and instead shot Josif and Stevan. The three boys ran off. Josif shot Pera to death with his revolver.

Anna realizes the horrific mistake she made in sleeping with the ultimate enemy. If things couldn't get any worse, Grace tells Anna that she has suppressed memories of events back then. Grace explains that the mind chooses not to remmeber in order to protect us. Anna watches as Boyd interviews her friend Petropecic. Petropecic flashes back to seeing Radovan signal to him that Pera was dead. Jasnl injects him with a sedative and says she is going to find Pera. With Petropecic unconscious and Radov out of the room, I guess we're using Anna's suppressed memories to tell this part of the flashback. Jasnl promises Anna she will find Pera and the three of them will escape in a big helicopter. Petropecic says that when he woke up he took Anna to safety. Anna has a different memory. She remembers Petropecic leaving her alone while he went to look for her mother.

Radovan's army records have a different memory of his life than what he told Boyd. He told Boyd he was Bosnian, when really he is Serbian. Boyd says Radovan and Petropecic were involved in "blooding," basically genocide. They used the codename Abdullah Akmadov. While Jasnl was running through the woods she found dozens of murdered civilians before finding Pera's body. Petropecic and Radov wanted to protect their secret. Radov confronted her first, but it is Petropecic who shot Jasnl in the back.

The two men say that Boyd is just guessing. But Boyd says his account is accurate because he has 3 witnesses. The three boys were watching from the woods. Now grown up, they identify Petropecic as the shooter. Now it is Milan's turn to be squicked out over his friendship with a killer. Radovan still contends they cannot prove anything, but Lockhart breaks out some science on him and says that one of the boys is linked to the murder scene by his blood, proving they were there.

I know we are not supposed to care, but it might be nice to figure out the heroin deal. Radovan was clearly making money off of dealing drugs, but he was the only one among Stefan, Josif and Petropecic to have any visible wealth. Radov may or may have been a middleman. We only know that the Abdullah person was a complete myth. Did Petropecic have anything to do with the drug deals? Why was Petropecic so willing to play games with Radov's head with the needle trick when Radov could expose Petropecic's identity? Telling a man he will die within the hour is bound to produce some unexpected results. Josif and Stevan seemed like complete novices in the drug game, but they didn't seem to have any other games going.

Boyd takes a walk along a bridge and then goes alone to collect Luke from the morgue.