Death Valley episode 3 recap: Who murdered the best man?

Death Valley episode 3 sees a best man found dead in a churchyard. Can Janie and John crack another case? Here's everything that happened in episode 3...

A posh car arrives carrying a bride to church for her wedding day. Two photographers talk about the shots they need to get. The dad fusses with the bride's hair, who tells him to leave it alone. The bride seems tense. Then Ashley, one of the photographers, says there's a dead body!

Baxter, staring at the dead male victim in the graveyard, says it's a shame when they're this young… and fit. Clarke turns up. The victim is the best man, Gethin, who ran a digital marketing company with the groom. The victim was staying at a rental cottage with the groom’s party. The groom is called Aaron, and his brother is called Nathan.

The victim appears to have been pushed, and his head hit a grave stone. One of the glass panels on the church's side doors was smashed. Janie thinks the scene looks staged.

Janie interviews the groom, Aaron (Ghosts star Kiell Smith-Bynoe). Aaron says he's not cancelling the wedding, just rearranging for later in the week! Janie is shocked. He says the victim played a big part in the project. Janie says you call your wedding a project? He does as they have clients coming from all over for the event. Turns out the bride is also seeing it as a marketing event, attracting potential clients for the gallery she runs.

The day before his death, the victim failed to show for the groom's pub meal and stayed in his room most of the day. Nathan says he didn't see the victim, but Aaron says he heard the victim, because he put taps on and woke him up in the night.

John is talking to Alan, his cat, about the fact that he seems to be off his food when Janie texts asking for help on the case. John and Janie meet in the coffee shop to discuss the case, and Janie's mum turns up. She orders a chocolate pan, or as everyone else knows it, a pain au chocolat. Janie’s not impressed by her mother!

John looks at the best man's speech. Janie says one of the cards with the speech on is missing; they think he must have lost it. But John says the speech seems meticulous, and therefore it’s unlikely the man who wrote it would mislay part of it. John thinks part of the speech has been nicked. Janie wonders why Nathan had his speech printed out unless he knew he was going to be the new best man.

As they leave, they run into someone called Rhiannon (Remy Beasley), and there's an atmosphere between her and Janie.

Janie and John drive off, and when they arrive at the church, John is told to keep a low profile when a fan goes, "It's you, Caesar, off the telly, isn’t it?!" The man wants the police to solve the case quickly as they’re disturbing the badgers.

Janie goes to talk to Nathan, who's cleaned the boot of his car. Nathan says he'd prepared a speech because he thought, as Aaron’s brother, he'd be asked to be best man. Nathan admits he didn't like the victim, who was chucked out of uni.

Meanwhile, John goes undercover at bride Sioned's (Amy Morgan) gallery. He praises one of her pictures to get in with her. She recognizes him for his acting. She mentions the best man dropping dead, but doesn’t exactly look heartbroken. She says if it were up to her, they'd wait to get married.

Evan has looked into the victim's finances. He was given four grand by the father of the bride to hire the car for the wedding, but he only paid two for it. She goes to interview the father of the bride, Chris. She tells Chris about the car con. He describes Gethin as "slimy" and said the victim fell out with Nathan on the night of the stag. He says he's an alcoholic and better go to his AA meeting.

John and Janie discuss the case. John is confused by Aaron's behaviour. Why is he rushing through the wedding when his best mate is dead? John says he plans to discuss it more with Sioned, but Janie says he can’t. Next scene, Sioned is painting John’s portrait! "Pop your clothes on the stool," she says. John's shocked! She says she's just joking. Aaron turns up, he's not impressed that his wife-to-be is painting when she should be focusing on the wedding.

At the police station, Janie is looking through social media from the stag do. Baxter calls Janie into the post-mortem. Janie says the groom and the best man heard the victim use his bathroom at 12.30 at night, but Baxter says they're talking rubbish as the victim's watch stopped after being smashed at the time of his death, an hour before. He had a lot of laxatives in his stomach.

Nathan admits to sticking a load of laxatives in with the victim’s vitamin powder to get rid of him on the day of the wedding. Nathan says that when he found the body, he smashed the church door to make it look like a robbery, and then he washed the glass with the laxatives in. And that's who Aaron heard running the taps, adds Janie.

Nathan says he didn't mean to kill Gethin. Janie tells him not to worry, he didn't kill him. She asks him if he stole a card from the best man's speech. He says he didn't.

Gethin was chucked out of uni for stealing exam papers and selling them to students.

John says to Janie that Sioned can't be the killer because she's an "artistic soul," but Janie points out she didn’t like Gethin. John says he's discovered Sioned was, in fact, having an affair with Gethin! John and Janie argue over why John won't reveal more about his late wife. He eventually confesses how guilty he feels because he was so tied up with work, he didn't realise she was dying until it was almost too late.

At the gallery, Sioned admits to the affair with Gethin but says it was months ago. She said she asked Gethin to step down as best man, but they ended up going to bed again! She says Aaron didn’t know about the affair.

In church later, Aaron says he knew about the affair! She can't understand why he kept him as a best man. She says Gethin got chucked out of uni for selling exam papers, but she thinks it was Aaron, not Gethin, who masterminded that operation. Aaron admits it was he and he owed Gethin, but Gethin pushed it too far and kept asking for salary increases. Aaron admits that Gethin threatened to expose his uni fraud and that he stole the card from his best man’s speech because it alluded to Aaron being the one behind the uni scam.

Meanwhile, John is speaking to the badger man and discovers he had a night vision cam pointing at the church. He sees Janie and says sorry to her for his outburst.

John and Janie watch the night cam footage. They see Sioned in the middle of the night at the church. Janie interviews Sioned. She admits sneaking out to see Gethin, who declared he was in love with her and wanted to run away with her. When she knocked him back, he threatened to tell Aaron everything. She denies killing him, though.

John and Janie discuss the case, and suddenly John mutters "television". He has recalled, it turns out, the fact that Chris turned his TV up on the night before the wedding, thus forcing Sioned to put in earplugs. And this is crucial...

They decide they have to stop the wedding. At the wedding, Janie and John address the congregation.

Janie says there was one secret that led to Gethin's death: he was having an affair with Sioned. The crowd gasps, especially when Aaron says he knew. "You weren't exactly subtle," he says.

Chris is revealed as the killer

Chris steps up and says he's going to walk his daughter down the aisle. Janie says no, he isn’t, because he murdered Gethin! Chris wanted the wedding to be perfect. John says Chris felt guilty because he neglected Sioned as a child because of his alcoholism. Stressed, he had a drink in the churchyard. Janie says he was a considerate dad, so he wouldn't have put the television on loudly unless he wanted Sioned to put her earplugs in so he could sneak out.

In the churchyard, Chris heard the argument between Gethin and Sioned. You heard him threatening to ruin her big day, says John. Janie says they found a bottle of wine near the body, and forensics should prove Chris drank out of it.

Chris admits it, he said he had to do something to protect his daughter. Gethin started mocking him, and he pushed him, not meaning to kill him. Janie leads him out of the church.

Janie and John discuss the case at the coffee shop. Sioned and Aaron have rearranged the wedding again. John doubts it will last. They discuss John's wife.

Rhiannon walks into the coffee shop. They have a weird moment together. Turns out Janie has swapped their coffee over, so dairy-intolerant Rhiannon now has one full of milk!

John is off to the tip to get rid of the terrible portrait Sioned did of him, despite Janie teasing him that she'll have it.