Line of Duty Series 6 Episode 7: H, The Fourth Man, the End of AC-12 & All Our Questions & Theories

What we do know is that, even if Osborne didn’t personally collude in OCG activity, he certainly turned a blind eye to it to protect his own reputation and that of the force. And he conspired to cover up police wrongdoing in the murder of Kareem Ali. He’s a PR-man with no backbone who surrounds himself with cronies. Osborne has done everything in his power to suppress anti-corruption, including forcing Ted to retire, Sindwhani to resign, and dramatically restructuring the department to minimalize its power. He doesn’t have to be working with the OCG to be a villain.

Who ordered the hit on Gail Vella? 

That had to be Buckells and/or Thurwell, with or without the collusion of CC Osborne. All the other murders – Denton, Waldron, Cottan, Hilton, Corbett, Thurwell, Lakewell… were carried out by the OCG in their own interest. The only people who stood to benefit from Vella’s murder were Buckells, Thurwell, and Osborne, to silence her investigation into their corrupt suppression of the Lawrence Christopher murder. 

How did Buckells disguise his IP address?

In the search of Marcus Thurwell’s house in Spain, computer equipment was discovered that had communicated with IP addresses belonging to Joanne Davidson and Lisa McQueen. Buckells’ UK-based laptop was rerouting through this Spanish equipment to throw cyber-investigations off the scent. 

Why did Tommy make Jo think Fairbank was her father?

To control her through fear. Tommy was skilled in grooming young, vulnerable people, and he made up the lie that Patrick Fairbank was the dangerous corrupt copper who’d raped Jo’s mother so that Fairbank could be used as a kind of bogeyman to scare Jo into doing Tommy’s bidding. What an evil piece of work.

What was under the concrete floor in the industrial unit?

Insurance in the form of murder weapons covered in the blood of their victims and the fingerprints of the killer, or the person the OCG were threatening to frame as the killer. There was the gun Carl Banks had used to kill Gail Vella. There were the knives Ryan Pilkington used to kill Maneet Bindra and John Corbett, and the knife an OCG member had used to kill Jackie Laverty before contaminating it with Tony Gates’ fingerprints while he was unconscious. 

Was Chris Lomax bent?

When Lomax was named as the requesting officer on the forged paperwork extracting Davidson from HMP Brentiss, it looked like he was definitely bent. But then Kate Fleming was named on that same paperwork as the supporting officer for the production order, and we know that Kate is true-blue. So Chris’ name could equally have been forged, meaning that there’s no hard evidence as yet that he’s corrupt.