Wire in the Blood

From The Defeated (1) (6x5)

: 10, 2008

In From The Defeated, the third episode in series six of this compelling crime drama, forensic clinical psychologist Dr Tony Hill (Robson Green) is brought in by Inspector Alex Fielding (Simone Lahbib) to investigate a series of kidnappings and murders where it appears that the victims were also killers. The body of the first victim, a young male, poses a riddle. He was beaten, strangled and shot in the head. Why were all three methods of murder necessary? When a second victim is found who's mysteriously linked to the first only by the presence of skin under his fingernails, the answer seems to be that the two young men had no connection other than in death. One victim killed the other. But who killed the survivor? As more victims emerge, Tony begins to piece together a bizarre chain of attacks in which killer becomes victim in a grotesque survival of the fittest challenge. The gun in each case apparently belongs to the same person - an illegal dogfight promoter who claims the weapon was stolen some time ago - but is it him who has abandoned dog fighting and moved onto humans? Meanwhile, someone is stalking a young single mother living in a remote country cottage. The woman's complaints are dismissed by the local police, and it is only Tony who realises that she is related to the other murder victims, and that she will play out the final act in the murderer's dark master plan. Tony faces another challenge when Michael - the cannibal psychiatrist he helped to convict in Unnatural Vices - manages to escape from jail by murdering the prison chaplain, suffocating him with the pages from his own Bible, and then disguising himself in the chaplain's clothes. Michael is back out on the loose, and Tony knows that he will kill again. When a Bible passage is left pinned to Tony's windscreen, and Tony receives a phone call from Michael, his worst fears are confirmed. Will Tony be Michael's next victim?