It’s Steve McAndrew’s first day on the job as a fully fledged UCOS officer, and a body has been found in mysterious circumstances. The UCOS team might be just a little out of their depth investigating an online hacking group, but even more challenging is their struggle to adapt to a new member of the team. Will they accept Steve as one of their own? Who knows.

About

The fifth episode of series nine of New Tricks, ‘Body of Evidence’ aired 24th September 2012 on BBC One. The series was created by Roy Mitchell and Nigel McCrery and this episode was written by Lisa Holdsworth and Julian Simpson and directed by Robin Sheppard.

It stars Denis Lawson as ‘Steve McAndrew’, Alun Armstrong as ‘Brian Lane’, Amanda Redman as ‘Sandra Pullman’ and Dennis Waterman as ‘Gerry Standing’. Guest starring this episode are Anthony Calf as ‘Robert Strickland’, Susan Jameson as ‘Esther Lane’, Andy Rush as ‘Xander Levine’ and Sarah Smart as ‘Catherine Green’.

Availability: Available for purchase in the UK on DVD and digitally. Episodes also occasionally pop up on iPlayer, and television reruns are common—be aware that broadcast reruns are often cut down to fit in the hour timeslot with advertisements. Also available on DVD and digitally in the US.

Body of Evidence

Despite seeming won over by Steve at the end of the previous episode, when this one open, Brian and Gerry are still bickering about Steve’s appointment. Gerry believes he needs ‘calming down a bit’—suggesting that Steve’s excess of energy wasn’t just the rush of finally solving a case, and lending more support to Steve being bipolar and in the grip of a manic episode when the story starts. But it was Sandra’s decision to make and she’s made it. The three of them are joined by Steve and Strickland; a body has been found. UCOS doesn’t usually do fresh bodies, but this one is a bit of a special case.

In the morgue attached to a local NHS teaching hospital, a body has been found that shouldn’t be there. There’s paperwork for it, but all of it is fake; the name, the address, everything. Strickland informs UCOS that the body has been identified as that of Martin Longthorn, who was on the missing person’s register. There’s no suspicious circumstances about his death. He died of an inoperable brain haemorrage. But the dumping of the body is extremely odd, and of more concern when the team learn that he working for the metropolitan police as an administrator and had access to highly sensitive police files.

The team split up to investigate various leads. Steve and Gerry go to speak to Martin’s mother and inform her of her son’s death. She says that all he ever wanted to do was help people—that’s why he wanted to join the police. He was a bit of a computer whizz, spending all of his time on his computer, and even applied for a job with the e-crimes unit. He was doing well, but missed the final interview to take care of his mum when she was taken ill. Steve and Gerry ask if they can take the computer, suspecting that any leads they get will come from there.

Sandra goes to meet Catherine Green, the last person to see Martin alive. They’d been on a date that evening. Catherine says she doesn’t know much—it was a first date, organised on the internet, and Martin left on a work emergency part-way through it.

Steve and Gerry deliver the laptop to Brian, UCOS’s resident computer wizard, who is instantly flumoxed by the fact that the laptop is operating a UNIX based operating system. He and Gerry are reluctant to call in e-crimes, who already think UCOS are technological dinosaurs. Steve, who considers himself very up-to-date with technology—he’s on facebook—takes offence to this.

Brian has also been watching the CCTV footage from the Morgue; there’s twenty-five minutes of footage that’s missing from the day Martin’s body as dumped. Whoever did it had access to the computer systems. As they’re discussing how this happened, Xander Levine from e-crimes shows up to see if there was anything of use on the laptop. It turns out that Xander knew Martin; he’d helped him prepare for his interview with e-crimes. They’d even met up following Martin’s missed interview, where they discussed ROGUE.NET, a group of political hacktavists.

After examining the laptop further, Xander discovers that Martin wasn’t just interested in ROGUE.NET, he was closely associated with them. He used the username Hawksmoor17 to talk to them on forums and get involved with their activities. This represents a major change to the focus of the case; e-crimes have been investigating ROGUE.NET for three years and have only ever identified one member.

Sandra and Steve go to visit Jake Bentley in prison. Bentley admits to knowing of Hawksmoor17—but doesn’t know much. Martin passed the standard tests, hacking into places to plant flags etc, and he knows that Martin was trying to sell confidential police information. It wasn’t the sort of thing Jake was interested in, but he introduced Martin to Boz—and it’s exactly the sort of info Boz would be very interested in.

Brian takes Xander back to the teaching hospital to see if they can’t uncover who got into the system. Xander rips into their general computer security—one guy has the general access password on a post-it note on his computer screen—but deems that administrative access is secure. And Xander knows who’s login was used that night; Professor Blake’s.

Blake is dragged in for questioning and initially denies everything, but then confesses. He’d previously protested against government changes to medical schools and in the process got mixed up with Boz—who then threatened Blake into giving over his administrative access.

None of this helps them work out who Boz is though. They’re out of leads. The next morning finds them all looking through everything they have, trying to find something that will point them in the right direction. For Gerry, it’s what isn’t there that concerns him: there’s no porn on Martin’s laptop. No personal files. Xander recalls that Martin used an online storage facility; maybe his files are there. And Steve, going back through the autopsy report, discovers that Martin went out for Thai food the night he died—which doesn’t line up with the timeline they had at all.

In Martin’s online storage, they discover that it’s full of material on ROGUE.NET. Brian recognises it for what it is; evidence. Martin wasn’t a part of ROGUE.NET. He was investigating them.

Armed with this new information, Sandra returns to Catherine, who sticks to her story; they were just down the pub, no going out for Thai food. She recalls more of their conversation though—when Martin picked up the phone, he said “Hello Boss”, or so she originally assumed. It’s entirely possible that he said “Hello Boz.”

Sandra and Gerry do track down the Thai restaurant. There’s no evidence he was there that night, no booking, but a birthday party was—and so they find the photographs. In them is Martin, having dinner with a woman. So Boz must be a woman—something Xander confirms, as Martin was tracking them down using dating sites. And Martin only went on one date through that site.

Catherine is Boz.

The impressive computer system at her house confirms it, but it’s secured. They have three chances to guess the password or all the data is gone forever. Brian, cleverly, deduces her password on the basis of her being a Dickens fan.

Catherine, finally beaten, admits to everything. She thought she was going on a genuine date. She’d slapped him when she’d realised it wasn’t, which is when Martin’s aneurysm ruptured. Thinking she’d killed him, she arranged for disposal of the body and created the fake paper trail.

The case resolved, everyone goes home. Brian is very surprised to find Steve in his house; Esther had invited him over, luring him with a homecooked meal. Brian is unsettled and Steve, sensing his discomfort, offers to leave. He gives a very good speech before he does so—he came to London to do a job, not make friends, but he’s not adverse to friendship if it is offered. In the end, Brian relents; he might as well stay. Maybe this will even be the start of a wonderful friendship?

Verdict

Ah yes. It’s an episode packed full of Star Wars references. Whilst Steve’s reference to the Jar Jar Binks poster is, well, the most obvious one, there’s a couple more tucked away. Martin Longthorn has an R2D2 toy in his bedroom, along with a toy X-Wing scattered amongst the other planes and spaceships on his desk. (see screenshot above, blink and you’ll miss it.) And then there’s ROGUE.NET; innocuous enough, and certainly a good name for a hacker group, but considering Denis Lawson’s role in Star Wars—Wedge Antilles, irrevocably linked with Rogue Squadron—and one wonders whether that is truly coincidence.

I think it’s important to note how careful Steve is with Martin’s mother. He’s very soft in his approach, being the bearer of bad news. And he’s seen physically supporting her as well (she has MS and needs support) but always in a very gentle way. He’s a manic whirlwind, yes, but he is capable of moderating his behaviour when he needs to.

Steve’s consideration is also apparent in that he’s refusing to take over Jack’s desk. Part of this is that I genuinely think he’s more comfortable at the little coffee area on the sofas—he doesn’t like being bound at a desk—but part of it is that he knows how much Gerry and Brian aren’t ready for Jack to be replaced. In many ways, taking over his desk is a final option, and they aren’t ready for it yet. Steve even steps in and takes Xander under his wing over at the coffee area, and waves him off when Xander attempts to enquire about why Steve isn’t sitting at Jack’s old desk.

Steve and Gerry continue to get on extremely well; making Brian feel particularly isolated and the odd man out as he struggles to find a connection with Steve. Steve and Gerry are down the pub again, comfortable as old friends. Gerry even offers to take Steve out for dinner so he can experience proper food—none of that deep-fried Scottish nonsense—leading to a brilliant exchange of:

“You buying?”
“Behave yourself, it’s not a date.”

Brian, of course, doesn’t engage with such fripperies; he’s too socially awkward. Poor, long-suffering Esther attempts to talk some sense into him. He’ll like Steve well enough once everything is settled. And Steve—well, he puts in the work too, leading to the lovely scene at the end of the episode. They’ll never be the most natural set of friends, but they have more in common than they think they do.

In general, New Tricks manages to steer clear of ridiculous enhanced forensics and computers—after all, the entire premise of the show is to have these old school coppers on the case. But this episode… they fall completely into every trap. The most egregious example, of course, is the photo enhancement, which is completely over the top. There’s no way you’d get a clear image from something that tiny. No way.

Overall—the case work this episode isn’t the strongest, but the characterisation is great. Steve is still settling in, trying to work out where his place is in this little family. And Gerry and Brian will come to accept him soon enough; they just all need a little more time.

Next time

The UCOS team investigate the death of a young tennis player, who’s seemingly charmed life was perhaps not as picture perfect as it looked. And Steve’s glaswegian approach to policing gets him into trouble. All that and more next time on New Tricks: Love Means Nothing in Tennis.