This article contains spoilers for Boat Story episode 3.
In the third installment of Boat Story, the brutal BBC black comedy-drama, we see Janet and Samuel get a new lease on life as they finally manage to offload the massive haul of cocaine they found aboard the shipwrecked boat.
However, their celebrations are short-lived. Although they've managed to bag millions for the stolen stash, the consequences of stealing from an international criminal soon become apparent. The Tailor wants his drugs (or the money they've made from selling them) back, and his henchman, Guy, makes it clear he's not to be trifled with whatsoever.
Here's our complete recap of Boat Story episode 3.
The Tailor's origins
Boat Story's third episode opens with a black-and-white flashback to the Tailor's youth. A man walks into the premises looking to speak to his father about his fraught financial situation. The business is in dire straits and has run up significant debts, but the Tailor's father is unwilling to make any staff cutbacks to make ends meet.
We then jump to the present day, with the Tailor dreaming of the night he spent with Pat Tooh. Meanwhile, Janet and Samuel retrieve the drugs from their storage unit. As they're heading to Vinnie's, Janet realizes the temporary neck tattoos she'd applied are rubbing off, so she waits in the car whilst Samuel exchanges the drugs for £5 million in cash with Vinnie's men.
They return to the storage unit and celebrate, dancing and lounging around in the piles of cash, before heading off to start putting the money to work. Elsewhere, Ben has gone to The Shang Emperor, the Chinese restaurant that was named on the bloodied advert he'd found at the scene of the Aireside Police Station shooting.
On the phone with his mother, Pat, he explains he's there for a stakeout, as he realized there should have been a voucher attached to the bottom of the flyer with the map of the station drawn on it. Pat tells him he should hand any suspected evidence over, rather than investigating on his own.
Money talks
Samuel calls the loan shark up to say he'll be paying off all his debts and then heads out on a bit of a spending spree. However, Janet has a more noble plan for some of her share and calls Peter to set up a meeting.
She offers him £200,000 to stop the move to Australia and to allow her to adopt Alan as her own son, with the promise of a further £200,000 once everything is approved. Peter gleefully agrees and rushes off to set things in motion.
At the seaside, Ben happens to sit down next to Guy on a bench. Initially, it seems like Ben might have been tracking Guy down, but as their casual conversation wears on, it's clear he has no clue he's sitting right next to the man he's trying to find.
Guy springs up from the bench after spotting someone walking a Pomeranian on the beach, the dog breed Pat Tooh had told his boss she'd spotted on the beach the morning Pat called in the dead bodies aboard the ship.
Samuel gets home to his daughter, who is quite worried that her mother hasn't returned home. We then briefly jump forward to a scene from Craig's theatrical version of the entire story, wherein the stage versions of Janet and Samuel say they 'lost everything' the minute they stole the drugs.
We rejoin the Tailor as he drops by Pat's bakery with flowers to try and woo her. Pat rebuffs his advances because of the vastly different lives they lead (if only she knew how true that was!)
Samuel makes an 'urgent' call to Janet and tells her to meet him at an address. When she arrives, she's at a fancy restaurant sitting in front of a luxury spread. She's annoyed, but he explains that he wanted to celebrate what has happened with the only other person he could. Shortly after she sits down, Samuel's wife happens to walk past the venue and drops in to ask what's going on; after Samuel lies and says Janet is just a colleague, his wife invites "Sally" round for dinner.
Ill-gotten gains
We rejoin our trio as Janet arrives at Samuel's for dinner. Whilst they're enjoying themselves, we see Guy stalking his way around the house, shotgun in hand.
During the meal, Samuel's wife ducks out into the kitchen to grab dessert; whilst she's out of the room, Guy overhears Janet and Samuel discussing how they've split the money and where they're keeping it.
The peace and quiet of the evening is suddenly shattered by a loud bang... which is thankfully just revealed to be Samuel's wife dropping the cake. Guy has actually wandered off to phone someone, explaining that he's learned what's happened to the shipment.
The following day, Janet goes to the unit to meet Samuel; on the phone, he tells her to come straight in, where she's ambushed by Guy. He's armed and dangerous, and demanding to have the money. But when they go to unlock the unit, they find their padlocks have been cut off, and the unit has been emptied.
Terrified, they swear to Guy they've got no idea where the cash has gone. Guy takes them down to the front desk and sweet-talks the receptionist into showing them the CCTV footage from the previous night; as they scrub through, Janet recognizes Peter having dropped by, just before the security camera feed is interrupted.
Guy drives off with Janet and Samuel in search of Peter. As it's a match day, she knows he's down the pub to watch the football, and they confront him about the money.
Meanwhile, the Tailor heads off to a village fair, where he buys every single pastry from Pat's stall purely to get her attention. She tells him she isn't just going to dive back into bed with him,
Consequences
Peter swears he didn't steal it, he just got suspicious about the source of the money; after she handed the first big payout over, he went looking for the source. After spotting a payment for the unit on her online banking, he went along to investigate. Whilst he saw the padlocks and camera, Peter swears he didn't take the money for himself.
Things get even more complicated when Alan walks out in the middle of the confrontation. Peter gets him to pull up the app for their video doorbell which proves he was at home just a few minutes after the CCTV cameras cut out, giving him an alibi. And when Alan repeatedly asks what's going on, Janet is forced to hurt his feelings to push him away.
We return once again to the stage play version of events, where both theatre Janet and Samuel wonder aloud about who else could have the money. After the brief interlude, we jump back to Janet and Samuel in the car with Guy; out of the blue, Janet suggests that Harold, the storage center receptionist could well be behind the theft. Elsewhere, we see Ben has made a start on his solo investigation into the Aireside station shooting...
After finding a fanmail address listed on Harold's YouTube Channel, the trio heads to his house to confront him. Harold tries to shut the door in their faces, but Guy forces his way in. Harold confesses that he was the one who stole the money and he's keeping it under his bed, and Guy shoots him in the end there and then.
Subsequently, Guy takes Janet and Samuel to meet the Tailor, who asks how much they sold the drugs for. Samuel reveals they got £5 million in total; they've spent half a million, but Samuel promises to get it all back.
Unfortunately, the Tailor says the stash of cocaine was worth twice the amount they got from Vinnie, and orders Janet and Samuel's execution. Desperately, Janet begs for the chance to get the money back from Vinnie, asking for just one more day.
In her please, she just so happens to say the same words he'd tried to convince Pat Tooh to date him, prompting the Tailor to ask Janet for advice on how to convince her to go out with him.
The Tailor grows frustrated with the conversation and puts a gun to Samuel's head. Thankfully, he gets a text from Pat at that time; "let's give it a whirl". Delighted, the Tailor gives them 24 hours to find the money and wishes them well in their search after asking Janet what he can say back to Pat.
The end of the episode then gives us a flashback to a traumatic event from the Tailor's past. His family was involved in a car accident that claimed the lives of his father and brother. Miraculously, he survived... and then we see Madame Bethune, the woman who checked he was okay. The young would-be Tailor is enamored with Bethune, and she just so happens to bear a remarkable resemblance to Pat Tooh!
Boat Story continues Monday, November 27 at 9 pm on BBC One. All six episodes are available to stream right now on BBC iPlayer.
