'Unforgotten' Season 4, Episode 4 Recap: The Incident At The Ifield

Last week's episode of Unforgotten Season 4 was pretty heavy on the mystery details, leaving little room for the outside lives of either Cassie or Sunny. This week makes time to focus on how their lives are going in different directions: Sunny on the up-and-up as he leans into Sal, while Cassie's collapses into rage. The latter gets more screentime, with Cassie insulting her son, Adam, when he comes back with the truth her father's dementia isn't clouding his choice to wrap Jenny into his will. And she won't listen to John to let it go, upending a conversation where he hopes to get her to focus on the future and their relationship with the impending move.

But the worst part comes when Cassie forges ahead with the case over Sunny's protests. Her relationship with Khan is the one thing she's never screwed up. But between the racial dynamics of the case and her refusal to listen to his caution, it's slipping into dangerous territory. 

There are huge developments this week, starting with everyone's favorite pathologist, Dr. Leanne Balcombe (Georgia Mackenzie). (Typically, her one-and-done appearance comes in the premiere to help identify the body.) Episode 4 finally brings her lab around to confirm Walsh's cause of death now that the head is here, though if it was a murder or a terrible accident where Walsh tripped and fell in an allotment and got stabbed by a garden implement is not clear.

But she's not the only one to turn up some fun facts. Kaz found the head of probationers from 1991, Ian Henderson (Ian Burfield), who remembers all four suspects and Fogerty well. He says they were a bit of a found family, thick as thieves. Liz was the natural-born leader; Ram was the smart-but-angry one. Dean was the natural detective, Fogerty the gentle giant, and Fiona an oddball who had no business in this business, but he was pretty sure she and Liz were lovers. But Fran gets the big break, as she finds Clive Walsh (David Schofield), Matthew Walsh's older brother, who was with him that night. Clive saw the five get out of the car and chase Matty, but then he ran off in fear of this gang of newly minted cops, and never saw his brother again.

As for our suspects, Ram meets Dean while Liz sees Fiona; both promise to keep a lid on things. Ram, in particular, sees this as another internal discipline charge to beat. Despite his "memory" of that night coming off way too rehearsed, Cassie was not prepared for Ram to use the specter of his skin tone so effectively as a weapon and is left open-mouthed and outplayed. Even so, he's having doubts of how long he can keep these balls in the air, telling his wife perhaps she should rethink the pregnancy, lest he suddenly no longer be there.

Dean trusts Ram, who was his man on the inside during the earlier smuggling gig. However, Dean has problems, some of which viewers probably saw coming. The wife, Marnie, who seemed innocent, knows about Dean's less-than-legal jobs and is shaken to learn of Cassie's visit. But Marnie also reveals another layer of this onion: Dean isn't who he says he is. He's lied to everyone about his past, including her, and she knows it. Dean seems to think he can tough it out, but Cassie's team has turned up that his life is an inch deep, with no birth certificate and no existing records before 1991.

Liz also seems to think that going stone-faced is the right move and does so around the emotional wreck of Fiona. Liz reminds her they agreed to tell "the truth" (aka the story Liz told Cassie last week, which Ram recited like a set of rotely memorized facts) and says next time to "let it slowly come back." Fiona isn't the only one who gets the stone-faced treatment. Eugenia gets it too when she baldly blackmails Liz for the pathetic amount of an overdue gas bill and a living wage of £9/week. Liz pays without hesitation, though not because of what Eugenia heard Cassie discuss, but of what that visit caused Liz's mother to reveal after they left.

But Liz's mother may not have talked about the Fogerty case: It's time for Unforgotten's patented Episode 4 Second Body Twist. This year, the show once again gets creative in bringing forth the second crime: There's no body at all. Instead, it's the death that had Fi in a panic last week, the incident that caused her to sober up two years later. She had a head-on collision with another car, a woman with an improperly strapped-in toddler. The child died.

The arresting officer thought Fiona was drunk, but she was too hysterical to breathalyze. The blood test went through the station where Liz and Ram were working at the time and promptly lost the results. With no evidence of drunk driving, Fiona was charged with a mere "death by dangerous driving" and let go. Her BIL has told her husband, Geoff, who is horrified she's kept this buried for their 17-year marriage, and wonders what else he doesn't know. Oh, buddy. 

What doesn't Geoff know? Fi's big worry to Liz was Cassie would uncover the precipitating incident at "the pub" involving Walsh. Liz told her not to worry; no one knew about "the pub." Liz is wrong: Murray found the incident at the pub. 

It was the Ifield, the pub where all probationers go. Three weks before his disappearance, Walsh got into a racially charged altercation with an "Asian fellow" for making "a pass" at a girl. The incident report was buried, citing no names other than Walsh's because the Sargent covered it up due to the racial dynamics at play. And from Fiona's memories, it looks to have been much more than "a pass." That's means, motive, and opportunity. Now it's just a matter of finding which one will break first.