Criminal Record is coming along nicely, but I’ll have to say the tension evaporated a little bit in the new episode, and one could see how that was inevitable given the extreme initial tautness of the story in the first two episodes. Episode 3 of Criminal Record was a little subdued, but there was enough to keep the viewer engaged. Lenker and Hegarty had gone against each other, and it seemed Hegarty had come out on top. Lenker had to find something against Hegarty, and she did. It would be interesting to see how she would use it against him and discover what truly happened in Errol Mathis’ case.
Spoilers Ahead
Why Did Lenker Visit Whitecross Prison?
Before DS June Lenker could get back into investigating the Errol Mathis case, a shooting occurred, and she got a chance to work closely with Hegarty. A young boy had been shot, and Hegarty offered to assist Hegarty with the case. He did have the option to not let Lenker in on the case, but he had just won the ‘battle’ against her, and in a moment of pride or caution, he let her in on the case, thinking it would look like he was acting a little sullen if he didn’t allow her to help with the case. Lenker was thinking of completely letting go of the Errol Mathis case. What was she going to get out of it anyway? Truth? Perhaps. But she had a lot on her plate. The only reason for her to get back on the case was the Hayes Lane caller, the anonymous woman who had called to give information about the Errol Mathis case. In the previous episode, she had been played by Hegarty, and she came out looking like a fool, and her wounded ego was another thing that was pushing her to not let the case go.
Sonya, Errol’s lawyer, was banking on Lenker to get a breakthrough in the case. But she seemed to have gone on the backfoot. Sonya did, however, work on getting flyers made to find the anonymous caller. A very blurry video from the CCTV was used on the flyers, but Sonya couldn’t just rest on the photo to find her. She convinced Lenker to look at Errol’s case files and decide if she wanted to visit Errol in Whitecross prison. Lenker was wary of Hegarty, as she knew that he was quite a senior official who had informants everywhere. Her visiting Errol would attract unnecessary attention and give Hegarty a chance to corner her once again. Sonya, being a shrewd lawyer, guaranteed her that Hegarty would never find out about her meeting with Errol. Lenker trusted Sonya, and she genuinely began to look at the case and found that there was no clear motive for Errol to kill his girlfriend, Adelaide Burrowes. She agreed to go to Whitecross prison and had a meeting with him, which didn’t turn out to be fruitful.
What Did Lenker Find Out About Errol?
Errol seemed like he had given up hope, and he didn’t have the energy to talk about the case or whether he remembered if he killed Adelaide. He was a drug user, and his alibi, a man named Mustafa, had not held up, and that was used to make a strong case against him. Errol had tried to escape with Patrick (Adelaide’s son) after her death and had rammed his car into an oncoming truck. It was seen as a murder-suicide attempt. But Sonya had something to say about this part of the case. She told Lenker that Errol was headed towards his mother Doris’ house, the one place he knew he would be safe. But Errol wasn’t the one stating all these facts, and if Sonya was to be believed, this was because he had given up on the case and had accepted his fate to rot in prison. This was all the more reason for Sonya to step up and find a clue to help him, and she wanted Lenker to put in one last bit of effort and not give up on the case. Mustafa seemed to have gone to Turkey, and the police had mentioned that he was not of ‘sound’ nature, and she wanted to find out exactly what that meant.
Why Did Lenker Start Suspecting Hegarty Again?
Hegarty was calm after getting Lenker to help with the shooting case. The young boy had survived, and the case was being labeled as gang-related violence, and the boy seemed to have suffered collateral damage. Lenker had a connection to the boy’s mother, as she was the friend of Lenker’s husband’s ex-wife. Lenker consoled her telling her a task force was being set up to nab the shooter. The shooter was said to be a black male named Jason Reeve, and Lenker was on the case, trying to nab him. Hegarty had set up a team that was being monitored by an on-field officer, a man named Kim. Hegarty had eyes on the case from inside a van as he was monitoring all the CCTV footage, trying to spot Jason Reeve.
When Lenker had gone to see Errol in Whitecross prison, a woman had taken notice and informed Hegarty’s man, Tony, who was involved in Errol’s case way back in 2011. He was now in a hospital, but he did inform Hegarty that Lenker didn’t seem to have backed off on the Errol case. Hegarty saw Jason Reeve approaching Lenker, and for a brief moment, it looked like he was planning to let Reeve kill her. It would have been a sin of omission, but he didn’t go through with that plan. Reeve almost shot Lenker, but Hegarty informed her to get away. There was a junior officer present, which may have forced Hegarty to not go through with the plan, as then he would have had to explain why he didn’t inform Lenker about Reeve walking up on her when he could clearly see that in the CCTV footage.
Hegarty approached Lenker, and she very cleverly told him that she had not informed him about visiting Whitecross because she had gone to meet a former gang member to find out about the current case, and mentioning Whitecross would have sparked more mistrust between the two. This was Sonya’s masterstroke, as she had swapped the names and made it look like it was her that met Errol, and Lenker was indeed meeting a former gang member named Samson. So Hegarty wasn’t too sure if the information he was getting about Lenker having met Errol was correct. Lenker thanked him for the warning that saved her from Reeve’s bullet. A press conference was to be held regarding the case, and Lenker was invited to be on the panel for the ‘diversity’ aspect. Earlier in the case, Lenker had found out about Hegarty’s moonlighting as a chauffeur who drove people around providing security, and just before the press conference, she found another piece of trivia about Hegarty that made him look like he was definitely hiding something regarding Errol’s case. He was the one who had gotten Patrick out of a drug dealing charge, and the interesting part was that he had vouched for the kid, implying he knew something about Patrick that others didn’t. There was an angle emerging that perhaps he felt bad after having sent Errol into prison and didn’t want to put more burden on his soul seeing Patrick go down the wrong path. Lenker was not done with the case, and she had a new trail of information to unpack, but she had to be careful because Hegarty almost managed to get her killer without even moving a muscle. There is no way he would go down before a fight.
