UCOS tackles the case of a Max Klein; an East German former Stasi agent who was stabbed to death in London whilst looking for his long lost daughter. Only nothing is quite as it seems as they dig into the murky web of half-truths and misinformation that surround his life.

About

The eighth episode of series nine of New Tricks, ‘Blue Flower’ aired 15th October 2012 on BBC One. The series was created by Roy Mitchell and Nigel McCrery and this episode was written by Simon Allen and directed by Philip John.

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’, Elizabeth Berrington as ‘Grace Cusack’, Kate Bracken as ‘Mia Adler’ and Edward Baker-Duly as ‘Max Klein’.

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.

Blue Flower

Gerry’s old department has been having a clear-out, and so they’ve sent a bunch of his old files to UCOS—including his old warrant card. Meanwhile, Sandra has found some archival evidence of her own; bank statements and other personal records belonging to a host of people have been found in a raid of a lockup. They’re covered with the fingerprints of one man, who was murdered five years ago. Max Klein spent every morning for six months standing on the same street corner, but on the day he was killed, he left early. The investigation never found out why. His dying words were ‘blue flower’ repeated over and over again in German.

Brian observes that all the documents found have been shredded, and then pieced meticulously back together. Max would have been good at that—he previously worked for the German government as a puzzler, piecing files that were shredded by the Stasi back together after the Berlin Wall fell.

Sandra and Steve go to visit the street corner where Max stood for all those months. They notice a public memorial for a boy killed by a car close by, and get into a bit of an altercation with Grace Cusack, the boy’s mother, who has no fondness for the police as she considers them to have let her son’s murderer get away . She knew Max, briefly. She says that he was standing on the corner waiting for his daughter Mia, who had been smuggled out of East Germany as a baby. Unfortunately, Max and his wife were caught in their attempt, and his wife died in Stasi custody. Max has spent all the years since searching for her.

Gerry and Brian, meanwhile, go to Max’s place of employment: a recycling plant. The managerial staff aren’t very nice, and are well… evasive, dickish, and xenophobic racists on top of it all. When UCOS wants a closer look, they try to deny it on health and safety grounds—but Brian and Gerry get suited up in high-vis and hardhats and they get their look. All confidential material found on the line is supposed to be shredded, and all employees are searched before leaving the premises. But when Gerry, sure that they are hiding something, surreptitiously searches the supervisors office, he finds bundles of confidential information—the supervisors are in on it.

Max Klein’s old flat is empty and abandoned—and there wasn’t much more at the time. Still, Steve thinks there must have been something.

“Half a mile is a marathon when you’re suffering from a stab wound. He must have been in agony.”

He was found half a mile from where he’d been stabbed—and Steve thinks that he might have been trying to get home. Otherwise, why would he have moved?

Strickland introduces a complication—another investigation is ongoing into the recycling centre, and it’s deemed more important than the UCOS team’s. He orders them to stay away.

Unfortunately, the recycling centre was their only lead. The team searches for another and Brian believes he may have found one. Blue Flower, Max’s dying words, was an East German protest group who infiltrated East German institutions including the Stasi. And Max’s daughter, Mia, is tracked down through DNA records. Sandra and Steve go to try and speak to her, but she runs the moment they go after her. Steve attempts to run after her, but even bribing some local teenagers doesn’t work. Inside her flat, it’s clear she left in a hurry. She grabbed her laptop, but left her insulin medication behind. She also dropped a teddy bear, which Steve has picked up—and inside is a memory stick with the backup files from the Blue Flower blog.

The unpublished files tell a very different story about Max. They say that he was a Stasi agent, and that Mia’s mother was trying to flee from him that night. He wasn’t a goodguy—quite the opposite. The team wonders if, perhaps, Mia wanted revenge on Max for what he did to her mother.

Gerry still has a bee in his bonnet about the recycling centre. The supervisor is meeting with someone in a pub Gerry knows is dodgy—no need for them to go anywhere near the recycling centre! Sandra is still cautious, but allows it as long as Steve goes with Gerry. (Why she thinks that Steve is going to stop anything going awry, who knows.) The pub is … well. It’s more of a strip club, though there is a bar, technically qualifying it for the description Gerry gave it. It’s just like the old days—when Gerry was known as Captain Outstanding! Whilst waiting for someone to show, Gerry regales Steve with tales from his old-school policing days. Then, they spot the supervisor thick in conversation with the DCI who warned them off the case in the first place. The supervisor quickly realises it’s a sting and makes a break for it, only to be caught by Gerry.

Sandra and Brian, meanwhile, are staking out Mia’s apartment in the hopes she’ll return there. Brian is attempting to pick his O-level German back up, to limited success. Their patience pays off as Mia returns. Back at the station, they question her. Her distaste for her father is quite clear—there’s no love lost there. Sandra tries to pry Mia open, as Grace Cusack described a very different man, but Mia doesn’t budge.

After Steve and Gerry’s interference, Sandra, Strickland and the DCI have a big argument about jurisdiction. This time, Strickland is on UCOS’s side: they get to interview the recycling centre staff. The supervisor? Got physical with Max two days before he was murdered. Max’s disdain for the identity theft ring was well known too. The most pressing thing, though, is that the team learn that Max had an altercation with Damon Rappley—the man who run over Grace Cusack’s son.

The accident warrants closer investigation. It appears it was a genuine accident—and Rappley has been granted an injunction against Grace, after she harassed him. After speaking to Grace, the team believe that Max went after Rappley for revenge. Sandra and Brian speak to Rappley, who says that Max was trying to get him to apologise to Grace—an idea Rappley strongly disagreed with. Max believed that Grace was the one who was going to do something drastic.

Upon examining the CCTV, they discover that Grace wasn’t at the junction that morning. Brian knows they are still missing something—they’ve found no evidence of Max looking for Mia, of him looking into Grace’s son’s death. As a Stasi officer, Max would have kept them well hidden. The team return to his flat, where Brian notices the wall is short. Shifting the wardrobe, they notice a blue flower in the wallpaper—which reveals a secret room. Inside is an entire investigation.

Brian finds Max’s journal, and translates the German inside as ‘I must stop Rappley hurting Grace.’ The team interviews Rappley again—they have doubts about his alibi, as he was late for work that morning. He explains that he drove the long way round, avoiding the junction. It’s clear he carries a lot of guilt over what he did, his part in the accident. Brian reconsiders his translation and the verb placement. After some thought, he realises Max wrote that he must stop Grace hurting Rappley.

With some urgency, the team find Grace and Rappley. Rappley has been stabbed in his cab—he’s unconscious. Grace has taken an overdose. She confesses; Max knew she was going to urt Rappley, and had tried to take the knife from her that day. In the struggle, Max was stabbed.

Sandra decides it’s time Mia knows who her father really was, so she brings her to his old apartment. Max was working for the Stasi—but he was also a member of Blue Flower, undercover. He was trying to smuggle Mia and her mother out the country. When Mia’s mother knew they were about to be caught, she made him turn her in. He had to survive, so that one day he could look for Mia—and he never stopped looking.

Verdict

Seeing young Gerry’s records—all old photographs of Denis Waterman—is particularly amusing here, particularly bearing in mind that New Tricks eventually does a series of extended flashbacks with young Gerry! (You’ll be waiting a little while for me to get around to that one, it’s not until series twelve.)

Steve’s ongoing fight with London continues, as he’s outbribed due to London prices. Apparently, Glaswegian teens will happily run after criminals for a tenner. But London teens? No, London teens will just get more money from whoever they’re pursuing.

My favourite scene this episode is Steve and Gerry in the strip club. The writers are starting to take real advantage of the chemistry between Waterman and Lawson—who by all accounts got on swimmingly on set—and it shows here. There’s even a very cute eyebrow-raise / wink exchange. They’re two men cut from very similar cloth, who approach life in a similar way, and they bounce off each other delightfully.

This is a really solid case episode, but, apart from Gerry and Steve’s delightful moment in the bar, is a bit light on the team characterisation and development for my taste. Case wise, I think it’s one of the better episodes of the series, but otherwise there’s not much going for it.

Next time

Sandra and Brian are missing in action for a week, leaving Gerry and Steve in charge of helping set up a new UCOS division in Glasgow. Returning to Steve’s old stomping ground was never going to be simple, but a web of mystery surrounding a murder case from 1993 gets a little close for comfort. All that and more in New Tricks: Glasgow UCOS.