'Ridley's "Hospitality" Extends to Making Friends with Murderers

Ridley continues to go hard on the jazzy aspect of the show, with an opening murder set to the background music playing at my local Starbucks this morning. That melds so gently into the opening credits I forgot to hit the "Skip Intro" button. Not to worry, there's a body within five minutes, laid out among the windmills, probably the "Gabriela" who hotel maid Elena Mondelo (Pat Dynowska) was caught worriedly texting by housekeeping boss Janet Venables (Jacqueline Boatswain). But that will have to wait because Ridley first has to melt back into memories of his late wife and daughter, who were apparently in the bottom of his whiskey glass and the reason he's restoring a boat.

Mallors: If it isn't the singing detective.

Ridley would rather tag along to crime scenes, dropping everything when Carol calls. DCI Goodwin tells Ridley he's on a rolling contract (Hourly? Day rate? Is Ridley a contractor paying quarterly taxes on this hobby?) and on a need-to-know basis. (I guess Ridley's finances are also on a need-to-know basis.) Dr. Newstone says the body could have been there for weeks, no ID, not even shoes, just flowers and a tattoo mark. DC Lakhan finds her ID (it is Gabriela) and summons Carol to report to the turbine owner Harry Graylish (Gerald Kyd), more worried about money than the body, who viewers saw partying in the intro as his wife Debs (Lucy Thatcher) looked on.

Ridley recognizes Garielle's workplace, the Palace Hotel; he knows the manager, James Mallors (Stephen Boxer), a jazz fan. Mallors says Gabriela, one of the hotel's live-in staff, was sacked two weeks back by Venables, who claims it was due to reporting in late after several warnings. Mallors worries a murder after tossing the girl out in the street will look bad for the hotel. Elena, her roommate, says Gabriela was having an affair with a wealthy (probably married) patron, who she thought would take her away from all this, but that her worried text got an answer several days later, claiming Gabriela has gone home to Italy. However, Dr. Newsome says the girl was already dead when that text was sent.

Carol starts the day off on the wrong foot, as Geri tells her she wants to have a second kid, which goes over like a sack of potatoes and causes Geri to leave for a few days. (Poor Jack.) Worse, Ridley runs off a kid from the crime scene, Kit McKellen (Zak Douglas), for playing amateur sleuth, but not fast enough because he's sharing photos on the Kill List forum about the case, claiming to be working with the retired inspector, and leaking Gabriela's autopsy. At least Kit identified the tattoo as Balkan/Albanian, which helps Ridley realize her whole Italian identity was false. The hotel knew "Gabriela" was a false identity and ignored illegally employing her.

Elena (also not her real name) admits under duress that Snooker Club patron Stewart Daley (Philip Hill-Pearson) got them their papers. Stewart claims bartender Jenna Noble (Rhiannon Clements) found the girls, but he never knew their real identities. But it's when Gabriela's phone gets cracked that a real lead pops up; her married rich dude was Harry Greylish. The Greylishs are throwing yet another weekend party when he's summoned to the station, insisting that he'd broken it off, hadn't seen Gabriela that night, believed she was Italian, and, hilariously, that Debs cannot find out. As he gets in the car, Ridley spots Mallors among the guests.

Back at his usual jazz watering hole, Ridley asks Annie about Mallors, who calls him a creep who mistakes himself for a charmer. Ridley then takes Mallors up on his offer of going for a drink to weasel out of him that he was all-but-pimping the girls out to keep the businessmen drinking during conferences, including introducing Gabriela to Harry, keeping quiet about Harry renting her a flat and alerting him when she turned up dead. However, he doesn't tell Carol about any of this before she has to let Greylish walk on lack of evidence, and then he pisses off Goodwin when Kit posts Greylish's name all over the web.

Sent home, Ridley goes back to working on his boat, now with Jack assisting, since he needs out of the house and away from his moms fighting. When Carol picks Jack up, Ridley convinces her that Kit's missing persons cache could help cross-reference all the fake ids on Stewart's laptop, though not before he puts the fear of god in Kit. Meanwhile, a cab tracks Gabriela to her old love nest with Greylish the night she died, giving them an excuse to search. It has her burner phone, a hoodie that matches the fibers on her body, and blood stains.

Harry freaks. He went to the flat after the police let him go the first time to grieve, and none of those items were there. They also question Deb, who turned Gabriela away when she came to their door, begging to see him after being sacked. When threatened with accessory to murder, she claims Harry did leave during the weekend, blowing up his alibi. However, with 20 minutes left in the episode, it's obvious this is all a red herring, so Ridley goes to visit Flannery to help him figure out the real criminal; go figure, it's Kit, whose side gig was making that forged documents for Stewart, and had been obsessed with "Gabriela" since he "made" her.

Ridley heads to Kit's house, calling Carol for backup. However, she's got her phone off, finally giving Jack her attention. Kit arrives and confesses he picked Gabriela up after she returned from Harry's. He swears that killing her was accidental after she saw the evidence of his obsession with her, but setting up Greylish to take the fall was deliberate. Ridley talks him into being ready to be taken away by the time Carol notices the messages. Kit tells them Gabriela's real name; she's been missing from home for 15 years. It's an ugly presser they'll have to do in the morning. Until then, Carol goes home to repair her marriage, and Ridley sings us out of another episode.