It's the Beginning of a Beautiful Friendship in 'Unforgotten' Season 5

They say when stress hits, people revert to their base selves. That certainly seems true of our suspects as Unforgotten Episode 4 opens. Faced with his mortality, Tony tries to buy his way out of his cancer diagnosis and then turns ugly towards Medhi Hussein when his glad-handing doesn't get him his grant for the youth center because he didn't actually put any work into it. Faced with her past, Ebele drinks herself into sleeping homeless in a doorway. Faced with a drunk girlfriend who disappeared, Mark starts covering and lying for her. Not that she's contrite when she shows up, still drinking like a fish, and she disappears again immediately when Mark says a "London Lawyer" called for her.

Sal: It's hard to feel jealous of a dead woman.

Sunny's in Paris, helplessly leaving messages for Sal post-miscarriage, but a funny thing's happening in his absence. The morning meeting's underway, not in Jess' office, but in the main room, and it's going well. Jess and Kaz bond over holes in Ebele's firearms arrest; Fran laughs when Jess cracks a joke about financial responsibility not usually being the habit of meth addicts. Murray confirmed Precious' last bank card use was the same day as Karol's last visit. Also, Fran found Jay in the system and is requesting the team be allowed to talk to him. But there is an awkward moment when they ask where Sunny is at the end of the meeting; they didn't know he'd been sent to Paris.

Speaking of Paris, Karol is busy hawking the stolen goods from the warehouse to the man who got him work papers on short notice in 2016 when Sunny arrives. (No wonder he works low-wage stuff; he's on forged docs.) Karol doesn't tell Sunny anything we didn't already know other than both Jay and Ebele were violent towards Precious, and when asked about the final time he saw her, he lies, like a rug, and badly. The only truth in his statements is his bitterness toward the system that fails people like her and his near-hysteria when Serge turns up to pick up the girls and sees the cops, which will surely worsen the custody dispute. 

Jay's phone call at the end of last week magicked up a new, very fancy lawyer called Graham Saville (Mark Oosterveen), who casually mentions his client will pay a surety of £10,000 to make this all go away. (The eyebrows hitting the ceiling around the courtroom are only slightly lower than poor Keith hitting the roof outside the proceedings at the discovery his client somehow replaced him.) But it wasn't fast enough to keep Fran from getting access; Jess and Sunny arrive to speak to him as soon as Sunny gets back in town.

Jay's story holds no more water than Ebele's, saying he hadn't seen his mum since 2013, despite Karol saying Jay was at the Hammersmith place in 2016. However, his claim that David Bell abused them has a ring of truth. Speaking of Ebele's lies, Murray has confirmed Karol and Judy's claims that Ebele was around the Hammersmith house in June 2016; the cops were called for the two having a row on the front steps on the 14th. Meanwhile, Fran asks Judy about Karol and discovers he had a mental breakdown after being assaulted for being Jewish. Still, his abrupt resignation might have been entirely coincidental — rumor was it was for upskirting a colleague.

As for Kaz, she's digging into Hume's background and watching him rail at Parliament over refusing to grant funding to the poor and needy and highlighting documents with his connections to Medhi Hussein. She also gets forensics on the bullet, traced to a gun that was never recovered, used in a robbery in 2015. The robber arrested was one Elton Paul King, a known associate and fellow gang member with Jay, and though he was locked up in 2016, he's out on parole now.

But the case heating up has nothing on what Sunny and Jess have to deal with when they leave the office for the evening. Sunny has a bouquet of flowers when he arrives, despite Sal texting to say she doesn't want to talk to him. Face to face, she says she doesn't blame him; he was always honest, that he'd been there, had kids, and wasn't up for doing it again. She's just deeply sad about losing the baby and feeling like she's not allowed to find living with his grief for Cassie hard, that she's excluded from it. Sunny shut her out, never even bringing up wedding planning, and she has no idea what to do. The worst part is the whole time, Fran's calling until Sal finally snaps for him to take it.

As for Jess, she had that drink with her sister she bailed on last week. She probably wishes she bailed again. Debbie has a bombshell: she slept with Steve, in their house, in their bed, while Jess was out of town and Debbie was babysitting. I don't have to tell you how this goes over or how fast their drink date ends, but at least it explains why Steve refused to answer the question no matter how much Jess demanded to know. Shellshocked, she comes home to her mother, getting ready to hand over the boys and go out, until she sees Jess crack completely. Jess demands her mother cut Debbie out of their lives, which isn't really her call to make, but also, she's not really in her right mind either.

Karol's not having a good night; Elise is upset about hearing about the U.K. cops from Serge. More importantly, Szymon discovered the missing inventory. He calls Karol to say he'll turn his back and let it reappear, no questions asked, which means Karol will stiff someone he shouldn't, except by the time he gets there, the cops are already taking reports. As for Jay, he's out of jail, but he's not heading back to Cheryl. Instead, he has to pay for that 10k quid he got with a visit to Whitehall and Tony Hume. Hume would like to know precisely what Jay knows. However, Jay is not impressed with Hume's show of power and wealth and punches the old man in the face.

More credit to Jay after he exits Whitehall, leaving Hume to be driven home with a giant bruise on his face. He heads back to the estate and to Cheryl, who, as you may recall, Keith discovered had moved on to parasite off the next skinny white dude who would knock over little old ladies to feed her habit. Jay walks in, finds the two of them knocking boots in his bed, and casually announces he has returned and Jordan can just mosey on his way. Jordan does indeed sit up, pop on some pants, and make with the moseying. Cheryl happily barnacles back onto her main man, clearly not the sucker anyone mistook him for.

The following day, it's the Jay backstory. Jess isn't in, so Sunny does this solo, interviewing a run of social services workers, daycare people, teachers, and foster families, all of whom say they tried at various points to rescue him and failed because the system didn't allow it or wasn't set up for it. When we get to Jay at 17, the interviews move from foster parents who were heartbroken to lose him to local cops who picked him up regularly. Meanwhile, Murray is on his way out to Snowdonia, Wales, which will finally, maybe, tell us how David Bell fits into all this.

As for Jess, when she finally does turn up, it's obvious she forgot entirely about the Zoom calls. Sunny pulls her aside to speak privately and says he can't work like this. But instead of anger, this time, he drops the walls and says he needs her to be in the room with him because it's the only way they can be a team. At first, Jess doesn't quite read the room and starts to put up her defenses about not being Cassie, but when he apologizes, she realizes he's serious and drops hers too. He tells her about Sal's miscarriage; she tells him her husband banged her sister. Sunny blinks. "Ok, you win." Franny, I think this may be the beginning of a beautiful friendship.