Death In Paradise season 13 episode 4 sees the show embracing the modern world when the suspicious death of a computer repair technician at an electrical substation turns out to be linked to a secret cryptocurrency farm — but was the victim killed for money or for love?
Meanwhile, DI Neville Parker (Ralf Little) has issues of identity on his mind, as he wonders whether he's being catfished by an admirer on his blog — and if it could be a certain someone from his past playing a particularly cruel trick on him.
Here's what happened in Death In Paradise season 13 episode 4...
The episode opens at The Hub, a local tech repair shop where Laurette Duschamps (Sherwood's Leah Walker) is busy helping customers, and Petra McQuillan (Hullraisers star Leah Brotherhead) is returning from her work as a nurse. As Petra arrives, the shop's owner, her father Ivan (Detectorists star Pearce Quigley), signals to his other employee, Ellis Baxter (You's Ben Wiggins) that she's home — which is Ellis cue to appear and propose to her. Petra suggests celebrating, but Ellis has some errands to run, so Petra, Laurette and Ivan start without him.
Over in Neville's beach hut, he's messaging with reader Sunset_Chaser on his blog, where a typically Neville-esque attack of autocorrect changes the sentence "I try to be as evocative as I can" into "I try to be as erotic as I can", and the power goes out before Neville can correct or explain it. It's not just Neville who's left entirely in the dark — the power has gone out all over Honoré. As Petra wonders what caused the outage, Ellis is lying dead next to the open cabinet of an electrical substation...
As the team investigate the crime scene, the cause of death is pretty obvious: Ellis fell into the transformer and was instantly electrocuted. Naomi (Shantol Jackson) has found his mobile phone, which has been damaged by the electricity, as well as a business card which has some random numbers on the back. Neville thinks the logo on the card looks familiar, but nobody recognises it. Darlene (Ginny Holder) brings over Chayce Jones (Why Didn't They Ask Evans? star Jonathan Jules), who works for the power company and found Ellis's body.
Chayce (who is chewing gum in this scene, and this will be important later) explains that it's likely Ellis was stealing electricity, judging from the equipment he had with him which is basically a "professional electricity theft starter kit", and the fact that there have been weird readings coming from this substation for a while. He would have needed something like an extension cord or a battery to direct the current into, but nothing like that was found at the scene — so it's likely that somebody moved it, but was that somebody Ellis's accomplice, or Ellis's killer? One thing's bothering Neville though: if Ellis had been stealing electricity for some time, he probably knew what he was doing — so why wasn't he wearing his rubber insulating gloves to protect himself?
While Neville is wondering where Ellis was redirecting the power to, Petra calls the station to report Ellis missing — and she gave their address as the Hub, which is a two minute walk away from the substation. Neville and Naomi break the news to Petra, Laurette and Ivan, and Neville asks if anyone knew why Ellis was stealing electricity, but nobody can give him an explanation. Laurette says that the three of them were all there together when the power went out. Petra adds that Ellis doesn't know anyone on Saint Marie apart from herself, Ivan and Laurette, so they can't think of anyone who might want to murder him. As they leave, Neville notes that The Hub has an unusually high number of security cameras for a tech repair shop, so Marlon (Tahj Miles) offers to stick around for a bit and see if he can spot anything unusual. Sure enough, he notices a suspicious looking storage unit at the back of the shot, and snaps a few pictures of it on his camera phone — and some youths film him doing it.
At the station, the Commissioner (Don Warrington) has fired up the generator so that they can carry on working — he had the foresight to install it back in 1987. He points out to Neville that not everyone has the luxury of a generator, and since the power company can't get access to the substation to fix it because it's a crime scene, it's in the entire town's interests for Neville to solve the case as quickly as possible.
Naomi fills the team in on Ellis's background — he graduated from Cambridge with a first-class degree in data science and went to work in the City, making a lot of money which he subsequently lost in some bad investments, after which he had a breakdown and ended up in Saint Marie working for Ivan McQuillan at The Hub, where he had a whirlwind romance with Petra. Looking at Ellis and Petra's pictures on social media, Darlene recognises Laurette — she's knew Laurette when she was little, and mentions that Laurette's parents were a bad lot, though Laurette herself was sweet and very intelligent. Neville suggests that Darlene approaches Laurette personally, as she may be more forthcoming when speaking to a friend. Marlon arrives with important information: The Hub backs onto a path which leads directly to the substation, and he thinks whatever they were stealing power for involves the contents of that locked storage unit. Ellis was clearly involved in something dodgy that he wanted out of, because some of the local kids saw Ellis and Ivan fighting yesterday.
At the Hub, Ivan downplays the fight and refuses to let the team access the storage unit, but when they return with a search warrant, they discover it contains a huge rig of servers mining cryptocurrency: Talium, to be precise. The penny drops for Neville as he realises the symbol he recognised on Ellis's business card was a Talium logo, and now it makes sense why Ellis was stealing electricity: to power the crypto mine without running up an enormous electricity bill that would make the whole enterprise unprofitable. Marlon finds the extension cables that Ellis was using to run to the substation, and Ivan admits to being the one who unplugged the cable, but insists he didn't kill Ellis: he was at The Hub with Petra and Laurette when the power surge happened, and Ellis was already dead by the time Ivan got to the substation. He also adds that he had no motive to kill Ellis: quite the opposite in fact, Ellis's skills had mined about $10,000 worth of Talium, so he was very much Ivan's meal ticket. Ivan concludes by telling the police that only he, Ellis and Laurette knew about the crypto mine.
Back at the police station, the team are hitting a dead end because both Ellis's phone and emails are heavily encrypted, and just as Neville is sending everyone home for the night, Petra arrives in a highly emotional state asking where Ellis's necklace is: he always wore it, it's not with his body in the morgue and the police don't have it either, so somebody must have stolen it. But the theft itself is curious: Ellis's necklace was a cheap bit of tat from a market stall, of little value to anyone else.
As the team decompress at Catherine's bar at the end of the day, Neville is telling the others about his interactions with Sunset_Chaser on his blog — though he denies that they're flirting with each other. Marlon suggests Neville might be being catfished by "a middle-aged dude named Barry", because he doesn't think Neville's blog is exciting enough to have gained him an admirer on its own terms. The power comes back on, and Neville returns home to check his blog comments, but something gives him pause and he closes his laptop.
The following day, Neville grabs the Commissioner for a quiet word before starting work — he suspects that Sunset_Chaser might be Rebecca Walmslow, aka Sophie, taunting him. The Commissioner is fairly certain that Rebecca has no unsupervised internet access, but promises to double-check for Neville, and in a genuinely lovely scene between Ralf Little and Don Warrington, Selwyn offers his own theory: that Neville is scared to trust anyone after what happened with Rebecca/Sophie, and that it's most likely that his random fan is simply someone who found his blog and enjoys his writing.
Darlene pays Laurette an unofficial visit and offers her a friendly ear. Laurette explains that Ivan took her in after her mum died, and has looked after her ever since. Laurette adds that Petra is her best friend, and that Ellis didn't deserve her, implying that Ellis was having an affair. Darlene asks her if Petra might have known about the crypto rig too, and Laurette says that she didn't tell Petra, but that Petra's a smart cookie who probably figured out something was going on.
Reviewing the security footage from The Hub, Marlon sees Ellis leaving for the final time at 17:31, with Petra, Ivan and Laurette all accounted for inside the hub when the camera footage cuts out at 21:27 — the time of Ellis's death. Petra calls the station to report that her car window has been smashed, so Neville and Naomi go to the hospital to investigate. Petra had left a bunch of cash and her credit cards in her car (really, Petra?! Why not go the whole hog and leave the door unlocked with the keys in the ignition?) which are still there, suggesting that this was an act of vandalism rather than an attempted robbery. Neville asks Petra about the rumour of Ellis's infidelity, and she admits that she suspected he'd been unfaithful. She confronted him on the morning that he died, and he admitted that he had made some mistakes and asked for another chance — and the next time she saw him, he proposed. She didn't know who the affair might have been with, although Ellis had told her he had something important to tell her, though he died before he got the chance — but she thinks he was planning to come clean about the crypto mine, the existence of which she had already worked out.
Outside the police station, Neville realises that he stepped in gum earlier, and when he gets inside, Darlene and Marlon break the news that the power company have confirmed that huge amounts of electricity were stolen — so vast, in fact, that it seems someone on the inside had to be covering it up. And sure enough, Marlon has CCTV of Ellis meeting with Chayce, so Chayce is brought in for questioning and admits that Ellis got him involved about three months ago, which Chayce agreed to because he needed the money, but he was finding it hard to cover up the sheer amount of juice being used. Then Ellis told him that he was winding up the operation, and promised to pay Chayce his share — but Chayce didn't get his money before Ellis died. However, it seems unlikely Chayce killed Ellis — for one, he was on duty when the substation blew, and for another, Ellis was the only one with access to the hardware wallet, so killing him would have guaranteed Chayce was never getting his money. Now that Ellis is dead, his crypto wallet missing and his private key unknown, the group's crypto is essentially worthless — and Chayce explains with the level of electricity the rig was using, it would have mined about 100 coins — worth about $250,000, far more than Ivan's estimate.
Neville accuses Chayce of being the one who broke into Petra's car, suggesting that they could test the wad of gum on his shoe for Chayce's DNA to prove he was there. The usual "we are not lawyers" disclaimer applies here, but surely this is extremely circumstantial evidence which doesn't prove much of anything, other than that Chayce chews gum and disposes of it irresponsibly. Anyway, that's a moot point because Chayce is sufficiently spooked to admit the break in, saying he was looking for the crypto wallet — Ellis kept it on a USB flash drive, and Chayce thought that Ellis might have entrusted it to Petra. Naomi connects the dots and realises that the USB stick was on Ellis's necklace, and that's why it's missing.
Working through the evidence so far, Neville remembers that Ivan was at the crime scene before the electricity engineers or paramedics arrived and therefore had the opportunity to steal the necklace, but when Neville and Naomi go to question him at The Hub, it's clear that Ivan genuinely didn't know the real value of the Talium — Ellis and Laurette were the ones taking care of the day-to-day management of the rig. As for Ellis's affair, Ivan isn't clear on the specifics either, but he's sure that Ellis loved Petra — shortly after Ellis proposed, Ivan overheard him in the storage unit saying to Laurette: "I love Petra — it's that simple. Binary. I love Petra."
Outside The Hub, Darlene sees Laurette approaching, but she hastily retreats when she sees Darlene and Marlon. Marlon, meanwhile, is being filmed again by the kids from earlier, which gives him an idea. He acquires the camera and looks back at the previous footage, where they have inadvertently captured Laurette in the background on her way to the substation.
This very much puts Laurette in the frame for Ellis's murder — but Darlene is convinced that the Laurette she knew isn't capable of murder, and Marlon points out that Laurette was with Petra and Ivan at The Hub when Ellis died, so she's got an alibi. Nonetheless, they've got grounds to question her again, so Darlene, Marlon and Naomi go to her house. Laurette confesses that she was the one Ellis had been cheating on Petra with, though she claims it wasn't a full-on affair. She knew that Petra suspected Ellis was being unfaithful and that it was upsetting her, so she made Ellis choose between them — and initially, he chose Laurette, asking her to run away with him. But then he changed his mind and proposed to Petra, so Laurette went to the substation to confront him, where Ellis was dismantling the equipment that he'd been using to steal the electricity with. She was angry at the way he treated her, so she lied that she was pregnant with his baby — she hoped he might be pleased, but he was horrified and wanted her to have an abortion. Wounded by his reaction, Laurette threatened to tell Petra about their affair and leave Ellis with nothing, and she blames herself for his death, believing he killed himself because he thought Laurette was about to expose him. Laurette says that Ellis came after her and gave her his necklace, saying she'd know what to do when the time came — but her conscience won't let her keep it, so she tells the police to give it back to Petra with her apologies for what she did.
Back at the station, Neville sees no reason not to return the USB drive to Petra, but points out that it's still pretty useless without the private key to access the wallet. Naomi — who has very much been the audience surrogate all episode, asking any questions about the finer workings of cryptocurrency that your average 9pm-on-BBC1 viewer might have — asks what that does, and Neville explains that it's a set of 256 random numbers written in binary. At this point, he's satisfied that they have closed the case, and will recommend that the coroner record Ellis's death as a suicide.
Back at his beach hut, Neville is reviewing a new bug zapper for his blog (and, very importantly, warning Harry the lizard to keep well away from it — imagine the uproar if Harry died on Neville's watch!). The zapper gives off a spark, which makes both Neville and Harry jump, and Neville knocks his glass of water over. He cleans it up quickly, muttering about how water and electricity don't mix — which sets off a spark in Neville himself, who now realises what happened to Ellis. (Sidebar: is it just us, or was it a bit of a missed opportunity to have a victim of the week named "Ellis Baxter" who wasn't murdered on a dancefloor?)
So here's what really happened: Laurette murdered Ellis. She was working with him on the technical elements of the rig, so she knew how much the Talium was really worth. When she gave the USB drive with the hardware wallet on it back to the police, she knew that nobody would be able to access it without the private key. In fact, Laurette had already sold the Talium by that point and transferred the money to a private offshore account. She had given Ellis an ultimatum, saying he could stay with her and share the money between them, or he could have his life with Petra without the crypto hoard. Ellis chose Petra, and when Ivan overheard him saying "it's that simple, binary — I love Petra", he was actually revealing his private key to Laurette — "I love Petra" repeated to form 256 binary numbers, which were printed on his business card. (That is excruciatingly poor security protocol, by the way! Clearly Ellis and Petra-who-leaves-her-cash-and-credit-cards-lying-loose-in-her-car were meant for each other.)
As for how Laurette did it, considering she was at The Hub when the power went off? Simple: the power surge wasn't what killed Ellis. The police were working on the assumption that Ellis died at 21:27 because that's when the power cut happened, but Ellis was actually murdered several hours earlier. When Ellis went to the substation at around 19:00 to dismantle the electricity-stealing gear, Laurette followed him — and pushed him into the live wires, electrocuting him. The reason this didn't cause an interruption to the power supply was because Ellis had disabled the protective measures that would trip the system when it registered a fault. After killing Ellis, Laurette earthed the wires and placed Ellis's body against the exposed — but not live — wires, then went back to The Hub. After joining Ivan and Petra for the engagement party, she slipped upstairs to the storage unit, unplugged the live cable from the crypto rig, knowing the other end was still connected to the substation, and dropped it into a bucket of water, which reversed the flow of electricity and sent it shooting back to the substation, triggering the power cut that was witnessed all over Honoré and setting herself up with a near flawless alibi.
As Neville unwinds at Catherine's bar, Darlene comes to him apologising for letting her personal feelings cloud her objectivity as a police officer, allowing Laurette to use their personal closeness to create a smokescreen for herself. Neville tells Darlene that her empathy is her strength, and she shouldn't apologise for that. The Commissioner overhears this and approves heartily, informing Neville that he's made some calls and Rebecca Walmslow has no unsupervised access to the internet — whoever Sunset_Chaser is (and don't forget, we still haven't ruled out that they're a middle-aged dude called Barry), they're no more dangerous than any other random stranger on the internet. That's... probably not as reassuring as he meant it to be, is it? Still, it's a weight off Neville's shoulders, and he resumes chatting — flirting, dare we say — with his blog's most avid reader...
