Waking The Dead : What Happened and Why in
Every Breath You Take

Who Was That?   |   Episode Summary  |   Talk About it in the Forum

Can anyone say this title without thinking of the Police tune? Interestingly enough the main story involves the police; however, the murder of a policewoman is almost an afterthought in this enthralling story of obsession and friendship.

Editorial note: Grace's behavior is so fascinating in this episode that she warrants a separate discussion. I'll post it later in the reference section.

Debbie Britten was a celebrated police officer who had been missing for a year. Despite an intensive investigation led by Detective Inspector Steven Maitland and DCI Chester, Debbie's whereabouts were a mystery, until the night her body was pulled from the Thames. It's raining, it's his birthday and Boyd has to figure out a crime that all of London, not to mention his superiors want solved quickly. The only bright spot for Boyd is working with his friend D.I. Steven Maitland. Steven is consulting with the team and sharing what he learned from the first investigation. Boyd seems grateful to have his friend helping out on the case but as it turns out Steven is not particularly helpful.

With not much else to go on, the team heads over to Debbie's apartment for some hands on investigating. They don funny white suits, masks and even funnier looking glasses so as not to contaminate a scene that has been contaminated by any number of people for a year. My guess is that when not in use, those outfits are kept in closet labeled "plot device" in big bright letters. When they wore them when examining the alley in "Burn Out", it could have been that they did not want to get their clothes dirty, but here the only purpose the outfits seem to serve is to introduce the concept of DNA evidence tampering.

At Debbie's apartment, the first thing they discover is a blown fuse. Grace concludes that the killer must have taken the fuse out so that it would be dark when Debbie came home. I think that would have made sense when Debbie first disappeared, but this is a year later and the police have been all through the place. If Grace is right, the only assumption is that the police conducted their investigation in the dark. Fortunately, the cold case squad figures out how to turn on the lights. They also discover Debbie's mother, Norma Jones smoking in her daughter's bedroom. Frankie then blows her own fuse, ranting that Norma is leaving her DNA alll over the place. Her raving take a turn towards the absurd when she admonishes Boyd for removing his mask and breathing in the room. Debbie's mother drops a red herring about a photo album and then leaves.

The squad figures out that Debbie was killed in her bedroom but on a different rug. The bullet hole in the wall has been filled with newspaper and varnished over, presumably by the killer. Frankie is able to find one bullet but worries that the killer may have taken the other one. Grace says that "he wouldn't have had time to search the room he would have been panicking." Panic? The killer filled in bullet holes in a wall with newspaper and painted over it. This panicked killer changed the rugs in the bedroom. The killer also took time to dispose of Debbie's body in the Thames river. It does not really sound like this person would not look for a second bullet because of a panic attack. In any event, using hair spray and mirrors they find the other bullet.

The next step is to recreate Debbie's last walk home. It is unclear why they did this, except that Grace believes that the person who murdered Debbie will watch. It seems like a longshot, a very longshot but they do it. Mel dresses up in a spiffy uniform and Boyd and Grace watch from a surveillance van. As luck, and only luck, would have it, they trip upon a central figure in the investigation, Christopher Redford. The team was blessed with another bit of forensic good fortune when they were able to find the cellophane from flowers that Debbie had received a few months before she died. It is so preposterous it is not worth thinking about.

The team decide to watch the people who attend the funeral. This seems to be a standard police tactic and given that the producers only sprung for a dozen extras to play mourners, spotting a suspect was pretty easy fare. Since we are on the point of questionable casting decisions, why on earth did someone hire actresses who could pass for sisters to play Steven's wife Fiona Maitland and Debbie's mother, Norma Jones? Adding to the confusion was that in one scene we see Fiona overcome by emotion at the funeral and then we see Grace going to comfort Fiona who is hyperventilating in the chapel. It certainly seemed as if it were supposed to be the same person. Plus, Grace asks Fiona about whether Debbie was frightened of a stalker before she died. Then of course there was that earlier scene in the car where apparently Steven was whispering with Norma and not Fiona. Was the confusion intentional for some reason, if so, I'd be happy if someone could share the reason with the rest of us.

Debbie's autopsy reveals that she was pregnant when she died. The question of course is who's the daddy? Debbie had been separated from her husband James Britten for more than a year before she disappeared and the team did not know of anyone else she had been dating. Frankie rises to the challenge and is able to extract a sample of the baby's DNA. Boyd hits upon what he thinks is a brilliant plan to figure out the father's identity; apparently, police officers have volunteered to submit their DNA to a database. The database is important because simply identifying a strand of DNA is not enough to solve a crime, it needs to be matched to a person. Boyd's theory is that "coppers have affairs with coppers" and therefore it is likely that the father of Debbie's baby is a fellow police officer. Frankie does not dispute his logic but she is thrown by his cavalier disregard of the confidences of the officers who volunteered for the program on the promise that their DNA would not be used for these purposes.

Frankie shelves her reservations and tests the DNA against the cop database. The results are so momentuous to her that she seeks advice from Grace about how to handle it. Frankie tells Grace that she is trying to decide whether to tell Boyd what she has found out about the likely father. Grace seems to understand the ramifications of Frankie's decision so why does she then circumvent Frankie by telling Boyd herself?

Frankie's big discovery is that the baby's DNA matches Steven Maitland. When Grace tells Boyd, he slips into his controlled fury mode and confronts his friend Steven at home. Steven manages not to pick up on Boyd's mood and antagonizes him further by continuing to pretend that he has no idea what Boyd is talking about. Boyd tells him that he knows that Steven was having an affair with Debbie. Displaying a rare flash of intelligence, Steven agrees that they should continue the conversation down at the office. The problem is that it is Steven's wedding anniversary and Fiona and his stepdaughter Anna are none too pleased with Boyd for calling Steven away. Fiona glares in silence but everyone can only wish that Anna were similarly reserved. She lashes out, spreading her vexation equally between her stepfather and Boyd, leaving some of you I'm sure to wonder whether Steven married Anna instead or Fiona.

As soon as Frankie sees Steven being escorted to an interrogation room, she knows she has been betrayed. At first blush, her reaction might seem to be another overreaction similar to the breathing thing but Frankie has a very legitimate gripe against Boyd and Grace. Boyd should never have asked Frankie to use the police DNA database for the paternity test. He knew that what they were doing was on the wrong side of the ethical boundary. Frankie understood that she was the one with the most to lose from conducting the tests and she also understood that if Maitland challenged them they would not be able to use any information they gained as a result of the DNA tests. Boyd assumed he would absorb any negative fallout stemming from the decision. It seems to be what he meant when he said to Christie, "I am my team."

Boyd convinces Frankie that he is still on her side in what can only be described as an "awwwww moment." Boyd explains that when he is working on a case he becomes fixated on getting the answers and he will do whatever he needs to do to get them. He does not promise that he will never do that type of thing again but he does reassure her that she is a valuable member of the team and he will not do anything to compromise that. To be fair, Grace does begin to make an apology to Frankie later but it is a lame attempt and it gets interrupted by Boyd and Spence so we never get to hear her rationale.

With all that happens with the team it is a little easy to become distracted from the case. There are three suspects: Christopher Redford, Michael Skinner and Steven Maitland. Very different men who knew Debbie in very different capacities but they were alike in that each was obsessed with Debbie.

Michael Skinner is an over zealous meter maid. Boyd alternates between being amused and disgusted by Skinner. Everything about Skinner is fodder for ridicule. He met Debbie at a work related party. It is impossible to tell what happened at that party since Skinner has been lying about it for so long that he probably does not even know the difference. Skinner sent emails and left flowers and chocolate in Debbie's car. Although he did not identify himself, Steven Maitland then paid him a visit and told him to stay away from Debbie. Being called in for questioning about Debbie's murder is Skinner's 15 minutes of fame and he milks it by telling the tabloids that he spent the night with her. Lured by a promise of another interview, Skinner is murdered. Mel and Spence find him strapped to a bridge, near where Debbie washed up, with a bullet hole through his forehead and Debbie's gallantry medal pinned to his chest - not his clothing but pinned through his skin.

Christopher Redford never met Debbie but that did not stop him from constructing a fantasy world based on their mutual undying love. He also constructed an exact replica of Debbie's bedroom as well as an elaborate mosaic depicting Debbie's life. One might sum Chris up as being creative, industrious and positively nuts. Chris' delusions about life with Debbie carry him as far as confessing to her murder just so that he will have a connection to her. Chris killed Skinner because he was spreading lies about Debbie in the press. Boyd is willing to believe his confession about Debbie but Grace says that Boyd bullied him into confessing. Chris is certainly a more palatable suspect to him than the alternative, Steven.

Steven Maitland had been having an affair with Debbie. He did not know that she was pregnant until Boyd told him during an interrogation. He and Fiona were never able to have kids. My guess is that after meeting Anna, Steven probably didn't want to have kids with Fiona. Boyd lets Steven go home because he knows Fiona will make his life miserable.

Anna Maitland came to visit Grace at the station to ask about Steven. She wants to know whether Steven is working on the case or whether he is being investigated. If the Maitlands were all innocent, there really should be no reason that Anna should think anything other than that Steven is working. Anna must therefore know something and Grace tries to pry it out of her.

Steven's family problems don't end with Anna's over protective behavior. The press finds out that Debbie was pregnant and Fiona tries to commit suicide. Since Fiona does not speak we have no idea why she does it. Guilt, embarassment, depression, disgust or betrayal are among the many possible factors. We just never know.

After Fiona's suicide attempt, Frankie and Spence search the Maitland home and find a security camera videotape labeled Wennington Police Log 9-10-99, the day Debbie died. It shows Debbie slapping Steven while they are outside of the police station. Later the team finds the jacket Steven was wearing that day and Frankie finds glass particles in the pocket. Steven tries to explain the glass by saying that he was at Debbie's house because he was part of the investigation. This doesn't fly with either Frankie or Boyd, the only way he could have glass deep in the crevice of his pocket was if it came from his gloves. Boyd says that detective at their level would not pick up glass, that's something the initial investigators on the scene do. The unasked question is why did Steven hide this jacket. There's no way he could have thought about the glass before hand. If there were incriminating evidence, such as blood, on it then wouldn't he have destroyed the jacket?

Mel and Spence are busy piecing together a series of phone calls Steven made and received that afternoon. It seems that he was talking to Debbie and Fiona but in a scene reminiscent of Kevin Costner's No Way Out, Anna is tricked into revealing that she had Fiona's mobile phone. Well, okay, not really. Grace tricks Anna into revealing that she has Fiona's mobile phone now but it does not mean that she had Fiona's mobile last year. Since they have no way of knowing what time Debbie was killed they also cannot say who placed the calls from Debbie's apartment. The calls in and of themselves are not vital but knowing what happened might help figure out who killed Debbie. As it turns out, who killed Debbie is not that obvious by the time the closing credits roll.

Steven confesses to killing Anna. He says he used a gun that he gave her. Boyd, who was convinced that Steven was guilty, does not believe his confession. Instead, Boyd believes that Steven is trying to protect Fiona. Steven says that he gave Fiona's mobile to Debbie, which would explain why a call from Fiona's phone would emanate from Debbie's apartment. When Boyd asks Steven about Anna's involvement, Steven denies vehemently that Anna had anything to do with it.

The pressure proves too much for Anna. She grabs a chair and smashes her way through the glass partition of the interrogation room. She may or may not have climbed through the window. Amidst tears and shrieks she says that she knew that Debbie was pregnant. This is a complete surprise to Steven. Anna seems to want to kiss him, Steven tries to push her away, Boyd watches the bizarre events from a corner.

But what does it all mean? It is unlikely that Steven would shoot Debbie as she cowered along the base of the wall. It is likely that he would dispose of the body and clean up the scene. Fiona probably was not involved. She probably knew about the affair but not about the murder or the baby. There's a good chance that she would have snapped earlier if she knew. Given Anna's obsession with Steven, she could have shot Debbie. It is unclear how or when she learned about the pregnancy. The pregnancy would have been the final straw because a baby would have elevated Debbie's status in Steven's life, consequently it would have lowered Anna's status.

In the end it does not really matter who pulled the trigger. Debbie's dead, Debbie and Steven's baby is dead, Michael Skinner is dead, Fiona Maitland is hovering near death, Chris Redford is going to prison for murder, Anna Maitland is going to prison or a mental facility and Steven Maitland, who has lost everything in his life, is going to prison. A complete waste of human life brought about by obsession.