Waking the Dead

- Season 9

(2011)

Sarah Cavendish, who had to leave the anti-terrorist squad for undisclosed reasons, joins Boyd's team as they reopen the case of banker Donald Rees, missing for three years. They speak to his wife Julie, who has terminal cancer and her children Miranda and Toby, who report seeing an elderly couple in funeral black stalking them when Donald vanished. They learn that the Rees' other daughter died of cancer due to radiation at a local hospital. CCTV from 2007 reveals that the old couple approached Donald just before he disappeared, drawing out 100,000 pounds from the ...

Grace believes that Julie, the Geigers' babysitter when their son Andrew died, deliberately killed Andrew and exposed her daughter to radiation to gain sympathy for herself as she has a psychological condition which craves attention. This is confirmed when Una, a nurse at the hospital when Andrew died, tells Boyd that she had her suspicions and told her boyfriend Glenn Burke. Burke, however, put the Geigers up to haunting the Rees family to blackmail Donald into giving them money and killed the old couple when they decided to give it back. Una has survived an attempt ...

Thirteen years after she was abducted, as a seven year old, from a care home, Claire Somers is murdered, her eyes gouged out. The abductor also gouged out the eyes on the corpse of Robert Fenchurch, the care home supervisor who tried to stop Claire's kidnapping. Prior to her death Claire had also abducted a young girl, Abigail Harding, and locked her in a cupboard, but, when quizzed by Boyd, Abigail can only tell him that she saw the Bagman, a child's fictional bogey figure known to her family. Clare was an escort and the team find that prostitution and drug peddling ...

Sarah finds a letter sent from Clare to her mother in 1989, three years after her abduction, stating that she was very happy. The team locate the house in which she lived in Sussex, now empty but with signs that children lived there. Grace discovers that several children were taken from the home, including Clare and David Drew, by social workers who feared for their welfare, David Drew gouging out Fenchurch's eyes after he was accidentally run over. The social workers are Leo and Karen Harding and their grown-up children are among those they saved. When Clare met ...

In a sewer below Westminster workmen discover the skeleton of murdered Falklands hero turned peace campaigner Piers Kennedy, missing since 1983 after making anti-nuclear speeches. He was known to Grace, herself on a Government watch list for her anti-war views and she recalls his associates; Lucy Christie, the girlfriend he dumped for a fling with Bonnie Yorke, still the partner of fellow campaigner Ralph Palmer and the charming but volatile marine Murray. Other suspects number Lucy's father, now Lord Christie, whose dog's hairs were found on the corpse and former ...

Murray's tape shows Piers and three others attacking a nuclear convoy,resulting in a policeman's death and the team believe initially that the government killed Piers in revenge. However Eve,released from custody,discovers that Piers had a terminal bone marrow disease and,knowing this,had actually joined the peace movement to discredit it with violence. Murray confronts Lucy,who,along with Hugo,Piers and himself,comprised the attackers but she is murdered and Murray set up for her death. Boyd takes him into the team's protection and they learn who tipped off the ...

Six years after the murdered corpse of an unknown young man was discovered in a reservoir Eve identifies him as medical student Karl Barclay. Karl's father Gideon takes the news stoically but his wife Lisbetta is superstitious and disturbed and sees her son as having brought Beelzebub into the family when he converted to Islam. Karl's younger brother Jakob and ex-girlfriend Naz speak of a letter Karl sent Naz before he disappeared but Eve believes it is a forgery and the team is also amazed to learn that Karl's body was cremated only days after its discovery. Lisbetta...

Despite murdering her husband it seems unlikely the delusional Lisbetta killed Karl. Sought out by Jakob Naz says that Mohammed, another group member, killed him before returning to Pakistan and Sarah's colleague from the terrorist squad Tristan also claims Karl was killed for refusing a bombing mission. However, after Boyd is abducted and tied to a bomb, leading Sarah into a trap from which she saves them both, she believes Tristan is lying. The experience also helps her overcome the operation for which she took the blame when one of her policemen was killed. Naz ...

A disgruntled Boyd is told he is to be promoted to a desk job and if he objects his unorthodox police methods will be exposed. Before he goes he vows to take on the case of several homeless teen-age boys who disappeared,at three monthly intervals,between 1979 and 1982. Dennis Grant,a kindly vicar who provided a shelter for the boys,puts him in touch with Tony Nicholson,the only policeman to show any concern,now a high ranking officer,whose reports at the time mysteriously vanished. Investigations lead to a disused pub where the abducted boys were taken and murdered by...

Grace and Boyd interview Stanley Heath's son Jason,who tells them that his father and two other policeman were murdered for beating to death a suspect in custody some years earlier. It seems likely that that prisoner was Nicholson's father and Boyd becomes convinced that Nicholson knew the boys' murderer and shielded him,deliberately losing his reports. The team's concern for Sarah grows as Nicholson brings in two sinister detectives to spy on them. Gradually Boyd works out that crooked property developer George Barlow took the orphaned Nicholson under his wing and ...