Silent Witness season 27 continues with episode 8, the concluding part of a two-part story. We finally learn who Oceanfloor is, while Nikki and Jack do some serious flirting before kissing passionately at, erm, a funeral!
The episode begins with Nikki telling everyone including dodgy Elinor (Julie Graham), about the needle mark she found on the victim's body. Gabriel says he was injected with something that induced a cardiac arrest and didn't show up in a standard tox report.
Jack reveals there are fingerprints from a coat worn by the victim. The fingerprints belong to Kenny Tate. DC Alice Kirk (Tessa Wong) knows who Kenny is. He's a homeless man and she asks him how the victim ended up with his coat. He says the victim gave him £20 for it. Alice spots a CCTV camera nearby.
Elinor secretly messages Oceanfloor again. "You don’t want the truth, never did. Just want to control me." "Think of Adam," replies Oceanfloor. Elinor says she knows what "deep fake" is before adding: "Put my son on a video call or I'll call out your bullshit”.
Nikki spots the tox results were falsified and tells Jack, who gives a suspicious glance to Elinor. The tox results reveal the victim was killed by a lethal dose of insulin. Jack shares his suspicions with Nikki, DI John Flynn (Sean Pertwee) and Gabriel. Alice's CCTV footage shows the victim taking the coat and more importantly Elinor in a nearby car!
John arrests Elinor. Elinor decides to explain what she did to the team. She says she’s heard conflicting reports about the victim's true motives. Elinor says she gave him a waiver to get in the country. She explains she did that because she was told it was the only way she'd see her son again. She says she was told this by someone whom she met online, whose daughter also went missing on their gap year. The online contact claimed the victim was behind it all and if she helped get him into the country they could get answers from him about what happened to their children.
We then see a flashback of Elinor confronting Htin by the river before he's snatched by the van and injected with the insulin. Elinor says she couldn't accept her son was dead and had got addicted to online conspiracy theories. She says Oceanfloor is her contact who claims their daughter went missing. Jack suspects that Elinor has been manipulated by Oceanfloor. Nikki tells Elinor her recent video of her son is likely a fake and that he is dead.
Nikki meets a pathologist with close connections to Myanmar at a community centre. He says it's likely the victim was at the massacre in Myanmar. And then May walks in! She identifies her husband as the victim.
In a fresh twist, Elinor and her arresting police officer are found dead in a car!
Jack believes someone big and powerful must be behind it all. After formally identifying the body, May is shown an apparent video of her husband shooting at someone during the massacre. She says the footage is a lie. She says he came to the UK to tell the story of the massacre to a reporter. She says social media stoked hatred that caused the massacre.
Velvy, with May's help, gets into the Htin's phone. They message a contact on his phone called Cornflower. Cornflower is annoyed that they haven't heard from the Htin and says he shouldn't have trusted the journalist Fish. Gabriel has an email from Elinor, obviously sent before she was dead!, warning him he should trust no one!
Jack goes to the hotel where the hopeless assassin tried to kill May. Fish is there and Jack takes him back to the Lyell. Meanwhile, the useless hitman is identified from fingerprints Jack took at the hotel.
They find the van used to snatch the victim with a body in it. "No honour amongst thieves,” quips Jack, indicating the deceased is one of the kidnappers, who's been shot in the head. Nikki believes he's the hitman, who has paid the ultimate price for his bungling of trying to kill May. The dead hitman had a pen on him and it’s the same type Felix the robot gave Nikki at the conference at the start of the first episode with the social media company Kaskade on it!
May reveals that the police were using the Kaskade app just before the massacre. Fish says Htin had worked out the app had an evil side that pushed its users to dark places and encouraged them to kill. Fish says Kaskade blackmailed him into betraying Htin by faking images of him drug-taking.
Fish suspects an employee of Kaskade is Cornflower and was helping Htin. Cornflower messages May, saying they want to meet. And who should turn up at the meet but the woman who gave the social media talk at the start of the previous episode! She claims she wants to bring Kaskade down but she gets "spooked" and leaves.
Nikki discovers the DNA under the dead hitman’s nails matches an ex-cop called Roger Gallup. They have CCTV from the conference which shows Roger, the hitman and a third man, Mark Foster, Kaskade’s head of security, plotting.
The Kaskade lady shows up at the Lyell. She explains how the dark algo Kaskade uses is designed to make you mad! She claims she was appalled when her Kaskade colleagues celebrated the massacre as a success for the app!
Cop John brings Foster in for questioning. He denies being involved in the murder. Gabriel works out that the Kaskade lady is Oceanfloor by the language she uses! And it turns out she has messed about with the CCTV evidence they have of Roger, the hitman and Foster plotting the murder.
Gabriel sneakily filmed the Kaskade lady spilling the beans about the dreaded algo and sends it on to Flynn.
Jack and Nikki do a spot of flirting and take prints from the charger at the plotting meeting which was later found on the hitman. It would prove the person was with the hitman on the morning of Htin’s death. The prints are Foster’s. They now have evidence Foster was conferring with the killers. The police arrest Foster.
May is shown video evidence proving her husband wasn’t part of the massacre.
Nikki and Jack go to a funeral. Jack tells Nikki he loves her and they share a big kiss! Blimey that was a complicated story!
