THE MISSING IS BACK - part 4

[MrsderPunkt]

As part 3 is full.

I'm having a day off due to illness, so am planning a re-watch from the beginning as have got used to the time switches that confused me at first. Quite looking forward to it - will pay extra attention to all things yellow, legs in fireplaces and anything else that you suggest. Probably cover my eyes at the drilla moment again though!

Who's Daniel and Marlene? Cannot think for the life of me who they are!

Did anyone notice how Sophie / Alice flinched in the hospital when Sam took her hand after they he and Gemma rushed to the hospital on hearing Alice was found ?
I thought it was odd at the time.

Daniel is Daniel Reed- his father was a doctor in the army in Iraq ( I think) with Stone who went looking for Gettrick. The father was supposed to have committed suicide though many posters believe he was murdered.
Daniel who was also in the army was very troubled and Baptiste went off to Iraq to meet him. I don't know what happened to Daniel Reed.
Baptiste met with his ex girlfriend in Germany wanting to get more information, perhaps her name is Marlene?

I missed either episode 2 or 3 and can't access the BBC player.
Imagine trying to make sense of it all when you have missed an episode !!!

Of course. Think the name Marlene threw me!

Sorry if this has been covered, but did Sam ever get in trouble for the written off land rover? I don't really know what the purpose of that scene was.

Trouble? Probably. But the main upshot was being put on part time desk duties and having to attend for psych support until declared fit.

Psych did say he could be written up as fit to be posted to a training slot in Aldershot, but was not going to be returned to the regiment.

Bugger. Forgot all that. Sorry. I'm no Baptiste.

Pysch said he'd only declare Sam fit for active duty if he went through the counselling process, talking about Alice. They assume the LRover incident was as a result of that trauma.

Daniel Reed only became troubled after his dad died. First he couldn't believe his dad would kill himself and the army was blocking any doubts. Then he went through his dad's finances and saw the payments to a man in Iraq.

He was v disenchanted with army life (polish/shine/stand up straight) so went to help fight ISIL with the Peshmergas in northern Iraq.

Shrop the Land Rover scene is as All has said. Sam thought that him taking the blame for Matthew crashing the car would help heal their relationship. They agree to go out for a beer but Matthew is late. Sam thinks Matthew isn't coming so starts chatting to Eve Stone. Matthew gets there late to see Sam and Eve coming out of the bar and then kissing in the street. So the relationship isn't healed at all. Matthew still doesn't want to be around his dad. Sam can't understand why, as he took the blame for the car. But he doesn't know that Matthew saw him with Eve.

I had an overnight thought.

What if Adam did start messing around with Eve (the original Biblical Adam & Eve), got her pregnant and the resulting baby is Alice who Brig arranges to be adopted by Sam.

Would explain the 'it hit her hard' 'she always wanted a family of her own' comments.

She is abducted by Adam not to abuse but as revenge.

(now I've wriiten that down I'm doubting it again)

I'm rewatching with DH who hadn't had seen any of it.

We've got up to end of ep.5, where the lovely Jorn meets Gettrick. DH is finding it all very disturbing - and it was interesting to see the reactions of someone who knew nothing about there being a drill lying about.

Can't work out why Gettrick a Lt in 1991 is still serving as a major in 2016. Normally, there would have been 'up or out' weeding points by then. So why was he allowed to stag on if he was never going to promote (essentially being a bed-blocker for everyone else)? It can happen, usually if there is considerable patronage for the individual. Brig, as same Regiment and Garrison commander might have been the influencer? Especially if there was a mutual interest in keeping him in a lovely married quarter with a capacious basement.

I still think Reed was a good guy, and perhaps he met his fate because he became aware that the Iraq 1991 incident was not a disgraceful one-off, but part of a pattern of continuing events.

The drill was lying about because he was making sure the cellar was not accessible. I think Lucy was taken care of by Alice, down in the cellar, when Sophie was in in hospital.

did anyone notice the padlock on basement floor was the one he took from iran?

Sorry, I know there's been lots on this, but I can't remember anyone taking a lock in Iraq.

I think that Sam is involved somehow in the abductions. His reactions to the things that happen seem odd to me.

I agree. He seems oddly shifty and at the same time kind of ... unmoved by all the horrendous things. Very quick to anger in a way that seems defensive to me.

I've a question. When Sophie/Alice comes back she has severe appendicitis. Gettrick says at some point later that he had to let her go because it was the only way to stop people looking for her.

Was she released because she had appendicitis and he was afraid she'd die? If so, why does he also have to let her go to stop people looking for her? He only needs one reason, surely? If he decided to let her go to stop people looking for her, and she at the same time developed appendicitis, that's a bit of a weird coincidence, isn't it?

I think he meant that the fire would put an end to the search for Alice. But then Baptiste came along and the Alice or Sophie question was raised, which he got wind of.

I get that, Fiderer. My point is that there seem to be two reasons for letting her go – to put an end to the search and because she is dangerously ill – when he only needs one reason, surely?

Fiderer is correct;

he had one reason for letting her go - which was to get her appendix sorted out.

She then met him when she 'ran away' from the 'parents' and they agreed that she'd set 'herself' on fire as a way of making people stop looking for her. So the question remains, who the hell was burned in the fire? Presumably the third girl

I thought he said she had to go back to 'her' parents in order to stop the search? Am I just misremembering?

And yes, I think the burnt body is Lena's. I don't know how, when or where she died though, but presumably in captivity.

He had to let her go as "Alice" to save her life. But she couldn't stay once she'd had the operation as she's Sophie and had to go back so "Alice" had to die, hence the fire.

He thought it all neat and tidy, it frustrated him that his neat plan didn't go as expected. He never expected any doubts as to her identity.

OK. I must be misremembering him saying she had to go back to 'her' parents in order to stop them searching for her.

Fiderer I agree. Sophie had to pretend to be Alice when she came back so she could stay in Germany. 'Alice' then had to die in the shed fire so Gatterick could keep both Sophie and Alice (two birds with one stone!) We don't know who the body in the shed is, but guess it is Lena who is either genuinely related to Sam or there has been a DNA fiddle. Either she was already dead and this was a way of disposing of her body (three birds with one stone) or she was killed to provide a body - because there had to be a body. That was the plan - which started to fall apart at almost the first hurdle when Sophie gave her real name to the ambulance driver. This immediately connected her to another missing girl (the two cases had not so far been linked at that stage) and she led people to believe that Sophie was still alive - why didn't she just say Sophie was dead? Talking about the roller coaster gave another clue to be followed up which subsequently revealed a third girl. Was it ever a good plan - or did Sophie herself subtly try to undermine it as best she could? I think the Brig I still very much involved - that's why Sophie didn't dare say anything more to anyone because she didn't know who she could trust and as the Brig was in charge of the investigation she was totally in his power (he and Gatterick were the birds holding the twig). Come to think of it the one person she could have spoken to was Julien as she could have spoken in French. Not sure what the point of my post is - just a few pondering.

I've been rewatching, and I think what he said was along the lines of 'everything we did when you were out, to end the search'

(The script room only has episodes 1-3 at the moment, so haven t checked exactly)

Maybe sophie deliberately made those few slip ups when she was pretending to be alice. She was too afraid to come out with the truth completely but gave enough away for them to think the two cases were linked and that 'sophie' (which turns out to be the real alice) is still alive. Had she not revealed that then there wouldn't have been this search for the other girls and once pretend alice had died in the shed that would have been the end of the story(esp since the butcher was arrested for the crime)

That's what I think.

Deliberate slip ups - when Baptiste spoke to her in French and called her Sophie she didn't say "Mum/Dad, I don't understand, what's he saying?" She just looked at him, muttered something to her dad and left the room.

Lillian could you have unwittingly stumbled across something with your phraseology? Killing birds (the girls wore bird necklaces, all the bird imagery) with a stone (Brig)??????