I've cleaned the circuit board.
It's working now.
On the house.
Just try to keep it dry from now on.
Will do. Mm-hm. Thanks!
"On the house"?
It was just a bit of water damage.
We're not a charity, Laurette.
We're a computer repair shop.
Oh.
She is here.
Hiya.
Where's Ellis?
Got a message from him saying he needed to see me here urgently.
Dad?
I...think he's around here somewhere.
OK.
What's going on?
"If music be the food of love, play on.
"Give me excess of it, that, surfeiting,
"the appetite may sicken, and so die."
Oh, my God. Well?
Will you marry me? Oh, Ellis!
It's beautiful.
Did you have any idea he was gonna propose?
No, none at all.
So romantic.
We should celebrate.
Yes!
Won't change your mind, will you?
About marrying your daughter? No chance.
She'd kill me if I did.
I was talking about the other thing.
I've made my position clear.
You saved me, Ivan, you and Petra.
I won't ever forget that.
This isn't an ending, it's a new chapter.
You'll see.
We need to celebrate. Good idea.
Hey, I've got some champagne left over from Christmas!
I've got some errands to run. Oh.
I'll just be a couple of hours,
and then we'll make a night of it.
OK. Yeah.
My little girl getting married...
Do you remember when Ellis first walked in here
looking for a job? You told him to get lost.
"What need do I have for a poncy trustafarian
"with a fancy degree?"
And now The Hub can't run without him.
Where is Ellis? I dunno.
Maybe I should call him.
Tell him to hurry up,
or we're opening the champagne without him.
I'm not waiting!
Harry, she says my writing "paints pictures" in her mind.
That's quite nice, innit? Er, OK...
"I try to be as evocative as I can."
Send.
Autocorrect! No, no!
Er, no, I can explain!
Well, that's not good, is it?
Is everyone OK?
Yeah, fine. Just...what happened?
Must be a power cut.
Why? There's no storm. What's caused this?
Morning, Inspector.
The power company traced the power surge
to this substation.
When they got here, they found...
Don't think we need a postmortem to work out cause of death, sir.
It seems he tripped or stumbled into the transformer,
causing a major power surge.
Paramedics reckon death would have been instantaneous.
Do we have a name? Ellis Baxter,
according to his UK driver's licence.
We also found a mobile phone,
but it appears to have suffered damage from the power surge.
Anything else to indicate who Ellis Baxter is
and what he was doing wandering around
an Honore electrical substation? Just this.
It's a business card, but it's just got
some random numbers on the back.
Hmm, that seems familiar. Does that mean anything to you?
So, Ellis Baxter wanders on to an electrical substation,
stumbles into the transformer, causes a power surge
and is killed instantly.
Why? What was he doing here?
Chayce here might be able to answer that, Inspector.
Er, you found the body?
Yes. It was horrible.
Never seen anything like it before.
Chayce thinks this might be an abstraction event.
Abstraction?
Dude was stealing electricity.
Been some weird readings coming out of the substation
the last couple of months.
I couldn't explain it. Now we can.
Voltage meter, screwdriver, alligator clips, gloves.
Professional electricity theft starter kit, that.
So what went wrong?
Dangerous work, abstraction.
Live wires, metal screwdriver...
One slip-up - bang! Kentucky fried thief.
If he was taking electricity from here,
where was he putting it?
The power?
Usually you would need a direct line for the current to go.
Like an extension cord?
Or a battery, depending on how much you're stealing.
But there was no battery or extension cord
when you got here?
Somebody must have moved it.
An accomplice.
Or a murderer.
If those wires were live and someone pushed me into that,
would it electrocute me?
Instantly...if there was nothing to earth the current.
But why...why would you think that had happened?
Well, if Ellis Baxter was stealing electricity
and had been doing for a few months,
it follows that he would have a basic grasp
of health and safety.
So why wasn't he wearing his insulation gloves?
What are you looking for, sir?
Industrial units, sheds,
anywhere that might require large amounts of power.
There was a second person at this substation last night.
If we find where that power's being routed, we'll find them.
Engineers are asking if they can get to work.
There'll be intermittent power cuts all over Honore
if they can't get this damage fixed.
Well, I'm afraid this is a crime scene.
They're just gonna have to work around it.
Have the paramedics take the victim's body for postmortem.
Let's see if we can track down next of kin.
Er, they found us.
That was a redirect from the station.
Petra McQuillan just reported her fiance a missing person -
Ellis Baxter.
OK, let's go and give them the bad news.
There's no need to drive, sir.
The address she gave is a two-minute walk from here.
Huh...
Dead?
There must be some mistake. Ellis isn't dead. He can't be.
We're getting married.
Don't. Just don't.
How? What...what happened?
Mr Baxter's body was found by engineers
at the electrical substation on Meadow Road.
That's like five minutes away.
Two minutes, 37 seconds at a brisk walk.
It appears Mr Baxter was attempting
to steal electricity.
Something went wrong and...
Wait, the power cut.
That was...? This doesn't make sense.
Why would Ellis be stealing electricity?
We were hoping one of you might be able to tell us that.
We were all here when the power went out.
We were meant to be celebrating our engagement.
Ellis said he had some errands to run.
Could he have been meeting someone,
a friend or a colleague?
Ellis doesn't know anyone on Saint Marie apart from us.
Why?
We believe someone else was present at the substation,
an accomplice who fled the scene.
For whatever reason.
Wait, you think Ellis was murdered?
We're not ruling anything out.
Oh, power's back.
We'll have to run a generator if we want to open.
Oh, I'm sorry. I shouldn't even be thinking about opening.
Sorry, love.
You don't know anyone who might have wanted to hurt Mr Baxter?
No, Ellis is...
..was...
..kind, loving, generous to a fault.
And none of you have any idea why he might have been stealing
electricity from the substation?
Is it me, or does this place have a lot of security
for an old computer repair shop?
Never used to be like that.
The Hub's been around for years.
Go-to place for knock-off games.
You think Ivan McQuillan has something to hide?
I think there's more to him and his shop
than meets the eye, yeah.
I could stick around for a bit, sir, do some digging.
Thanks, Marlon. I think that's a very good idea.
Well, this isn't gonna help investigating, is it?
Come on, work!
Ha!
Hey! Magic.
Not magic, Inspector.
Know-how.
Sir, what are you doing here?
Helping.
I presume you have no idea how to get the generator working.
I had no idea we actually had a generator.
I installed it myself in 1987.
She's a bit rusty now, but reliable, sturdy.
Bit like yourself, eh, sir?
Er, so you took time out to turn the generator on?
I came because Honore has been plunged into chaos,
power cuts all over,
and the company tells me they can't quite fix the problem
because of you, Inspector.
I'm afraid the substation is a crime scene.
Then may I suggest
you solve the crime as quickly as you can?
Power is a basic necessity.
Not everyone has generators.
We'll crack right on, sir.
I'll be in my office,
co-ordinating the crisis response
with Mayor Bordey.
So, Ellis Baxter... Background?
Mm-hm.
What's in there?
Smile for the camera!
So, we know how and when Ellis Baxter died.
He was electrocuted by the power surge
that caused the blackouts in Honore.
Looks like he was stealing electricity,
but why wasn't he wearing his safety gloves?
What do we know about him?
Ellis Baxter graduated Cambridge University
with a first in data science.
Apparently, he was some kind of tech genius.
He went to work as a software engineer
in the City of London,
where his products made a lot of people a lot of money,
including himself.
Which he then lost due to poor investment choices.
He had a nervous breakdown.
Complete burnout, according to his employer.
Eight months ago, he pitches up in Honore,
ends up at The Hub, working for Ivan McQuillan.
How does a tech genius end up repairing old computers?
Love?
I mean, his social media shows a whirlwind romance
with Petra McQuillan, Ivan's daughter.
That's Laurette Duschamps! She works for Ivan.
Do you know her? When she was a kid.
Her parents were bad news, but she was sweet.
Very, very bright.
She had to grow up far too quickly.
Do you think she'd talk to you candidly if you approached her?
I think so, yeah.
Might be an idea.
Whatever happened to Ellis Baxter, I have a feeling
Ivan McQuillan knows more than he's letting on.
And you would be absolutely right.
I did some digging and struck gold.
The Hub backs onto a hidden pathway
that goes directly to the substation.
So you could connect a cable between the two
without attracting attention?
But for what?
The shop doesn't use that much electricity, surely.
I don't think it's for the shop.
I think whatever it is they're stealing juice for
is in this storage unit upstairs.
Whatever is going on in there is seriously dodgy,
and Ellis Baxter wanted it stopped.
I spoke to some local kids.
They saw Ivan and Ellis arguing yesterday.
Enough! This ends today, or I tell Petra everything.
Said it almost came to blows.
Fight? It was barely even an argument.
A minor disagreement between two passionate men.
Disagreement over what?
I can hardly remember.
Well, why don't I take a stab?
I think you and Ellis Baxter were stealing electricity,
running a cable from the substation
to a storage unit on the premises.
Ellis wanted to stop, you refused,
so he threatened to tell your daughter
about your illegal activities.
All of which I'm sure we'll find evidence of
on your security footage.
What's up there, Mr McQuillan?
I'm a private person and this is private property,
and I know my rights.
You need a search warrant.
Was that really necessary?
Should have just told us what you're hiding.
Whoa!
Computers? What's this?
It's a crypto mining rig.
Beautiful, in't she?
What does it do?
What it says on the tin.
It mines cryptocurrency.
Like Bitcoin? Or, in this case, TallyUm.
Look, the same symbol
that was on the business card in Ellis's wallet.
TallyUm. It's the next big thing.
Lightning-fast transaction speeds,
next-generation block chain design.
Yes, but what does all of this do?
It's basically a supercomputer which solves
complex equations to mine cryptocurrency.
The miners are then rewarded with digital coins
that have a speculative value.
Cryptocurrencies can be worth around 20,000 per coin.
It's like printing money.
The catch, of course, being that rigs like this
consume so much energy
it renders the whole process unprofitable.
Well, that's where Ellis came in. The substation was there.
Figured, take from the rich, give to the poor.
Except costs get passed on,
if there's an accident or, worse, power cuts.
So it's the poorest who pay for your crimes.
Mining cryptocurrency is perfectly legal.
Stealing electricity is not.
Nor is murder. You what?
I didn't even know Ellis was running the rig last night.
He told me he was done with all that.
We know someone else was there.
They removed the power cables to cover up
the electricity theft.
Huh! Sarge, Inspector, look at these.
OK, wait.
Yes, I unplugged the cable, but I did not kill anyone.
Ellis was dead when I got there.
I was here with Petra and Laurette when it happened.
If you didn't know Ellis was at the substation,
why did you go there?
When the power went, I had a bad feeling.
So I checked and, sure enough, the cable was plugged in.
I went to the substation and...
..it was like my worst nightmare come true.
I panicked. I grabbed the cable and I ran.
And it was stupid, but it was not murder!
Why would I kill Ellis?
He turned a losing hustle into real money.
How much money?
After three months, we'd mined enough TallyUm to be worth,
I don't know, about ten grand. Ellis was my golden goose.
Who else knew about this operation?
Just me, Ellis and Laurette.
Has Ellis done this before? Many times.
He was the only one who knew how.
Well, if he'd done it many times,
why did he decide not to wear his insulating gloves?
Unless...
..someone pushed him.
I don't know. Maybe he got careless.
All I know for certain is, when the lights blew,
I was right there with Petra and Laurette.
I've ordered McQuillan to hand over
all of his security camera footage.
It might help us trace Mr Baxter's movement
the day of his death.
What are you thinking, Inspector?
That it doesn't make sense
that Ellis Baxter wasn't wearing his safety gloves.
But if all the people who knew about the crypto operation
were here when the power went, then...
..maybe it WAS an accident.
Unless there's someone else
who knew where he'd be that night and why.
OK...
OK, so you know
how Clifford Barnstable grows starfruit.
Let's say that Elijah's stall is cryptocurrency.
TallyUm?
And the starfruit is the coin.
So Ivan and Ellis were stealing electricity to grow starfruit?
I think I get it now.
Thank you. No problemo.
How are we doing with the postmortem?
Hopefully tomorrow morning, sir.
Ellis's phone?
Not only was it damaged by the power surge,
it appears to be heavily encrypted.
Same story for his emails, sir.
But Ellis was a tech geek it makes sense.
Well, that leaves us with little to no lines of inquiry.
Maybe we should just call it a night.
Where is his necklace?!
I'm sorry, what? Ellis's necklace.
I have just been to the mortuary
to look at his body and it's...
He's not wearing his necklace.
They said you might have it.
Is this the necklace?
Yeah.
He was not wearing that at the crime scene.
Ellis never takes off that necklace,
so someone has stolen it, who was it?
I assure you, no-one has stolen anything.
Was it valuable?
No, no, it's just a cheap bit of metal,
but it was precious to Ellis,
and that makes it precious to me.
Look, it's OK, sweetie.
There is nothing worse than losing someone you love.
I'm fine.
I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I didn't mean...
We will do everything we can
to recover your fiance's necklace and return it to you,
I promise. Thank you.
Again, I-I'm really sorry. I did...
I shouldn't have bothered you.
What's so special about this pendant?
It looks like something you'd buy at a flea market.
Sentimental value.
Sentimental to Ellis Baxter, maybe,
but why would someone else want to take it?
It autocorrected to what?!
Erotic.
So you told a person you have never even seen,
let alone met,
"I try to be as erotic as I can."
Yes.
It's not funny.
OK, it's a little bit funny.
I'm just happy you're putting yourself back out there,
flirting again.
Flirting? Sunset Chaser's just a fan of the blog.
Hmm! A fan of you, according to her comments.
Unless he's being catfished,
and he's actually speaking to a middle-aged dude named Barry.
Sunset Chaser is not a middle-aged dude named Barry,
OK?
Well, whoever they are, sir,
they have clearly taken a liking to you.
The question is why, though,
and I don't think it's because of your blog,
no matter how erotic it might be.
Thank you.
Some good news at last.
We need backup generators and fuel storage,
no matter the cost.
Busy start to the day, sir?
The power cut has exposed gaps in our crisis readiness.
Catherine and I are looking for ways to ensure
it doesn't happen again.
So...
How can I help you, Inspector?
It's silly.
You're very busy. I shouldn't have bothered you.
Well...
..I'm here now.
So, what is it?
Rebecca Walmslow.
I have reason to believe
she's contacted me via my blog.
Your blog?
An anonymous fan initiated a correspondence.
Some have suggested a flirtation, even.
As I understand it,
Miss Walmslow has no unsupervised access
to internet. Can we check that, though?
This anonymous person, it could be her, taunting me.
I can certainly make some calls.
However, I must say the most likely explanation
is that your blog fan is simply that -
a fan of your writing.
You think I'm jumping at shadows?
I think you've had your trust betrayed,
and that is a terrible thing,
but at some point,
you have to believe in people again.
My mum said much the same thing at Christmas.
A wise woman.
You'll still make some calls, though, sir?
I will, Inspector.
Hmm?
Hello, Laurette.
Miss Curtis?
It has been a long while, hasn't it?
Dashel's funeral.
You must miss him terribly.
I think of him every single day.
I understand that you've been caught up
in some unpleasantness.
Heard you're a police officer now.
I am here as a friend, sweetie, if you want to talk...
..about anything.
Not here.
After Mum died, I was alone.
Ivan took me in.
More like a father to me than my real one ever was.
And Petra?
I'd never had a best friend before.
She doesn't deserve any of this.
She seems very much in love with Ellis.
He didn't deserve her.
Why do you say that?
I...
Ellis...
He wasn't as nice as people thought, OK?
She was loving, she was faithful.
I shouldn't have said that.
I should go. Laurette.
Ivan told us only you and Ellis knew about the crypto operation.
Is that true?
Did you mention what he was doing to anyone else?
I didn't, but Petra...
She's not stupid, you know.
There's hours of footage, but what I've found
seems to confirm McQuillan's story.
This is Ellis at 17.31 on the day of his death.
He must be heading to the substation.
This is the last known sighting of Ellis Baxter alive.
And later,
this is Petra, Ivan and Laurette
preparing for a party.
Nobody enters or leaves The Hub after this.
Then, at 21.27...
The moment of Ellis Baxter's death.
All of our suspects are all inside The Hub.
So none of them could possibly have pushed Ellis
into that transformer.
Might have been somebody else, somebody we don't know yet.
If only we had CCTV at the substation.
Yeah. Good work, Marlon.
Keep going through and see if you spot anything irregular.
As it stands, we don't have any leads.
I might have something for you, Inspector.
I spoke to Laurette Duschamps earlier this morning.
Now, she implied
that Ellis Baxter might be having an affair.
She also suspects that Petra knew more
about the crypto operation
than Ivan led us to believe.
Saint Marie Police, Officer Pryce speaking.
If she found out her fiance was sleeping with someone,
that would provide motive.
And if she knew where he was gonna be...
I think we need to have a chat with Petra.
One moment, please. Sir, it's her.
It's Petra McQuillan. She says her car has been broken into.
Yeah, please continue.
Just came out to get some food on my break and found it like this.
And nothing was taken?
Not that I can see.
Inspector.
What kind of thief leaves cash and credit cards behind?
Maybe it wasn't theft
but rather a petty act of vandalism.
You think this was directed at me personally?
Well, why? Who would do that?
Well...
..we heard that Ellis may have been having an affair.
You knew. I suspected.
I confronted him about it on the morning he died.
He admitted that he made some mistakes,
but he said that he loved me...
..and that he promised to change if I gave him one last chance.
And the next time I saw him, he proposed.
You forgave him, even though you knew he cheated on you?
Everyone makes mistakes.
Do you know who he was having the affair with?
I don't know.
The last time I saw him, when he proposed,
he said he had something important to tell me,
that we needed to talk.
But you didn't see or speak to him again?
I tried to call him.
Tell him to hurry up,
or we're opening the champagne without him.
But he didn't answer.
Then the lights went out and...
What do you think he wanted to speak to you about?
I assumed
that he wanted to come clean about my dad's crypto mining.
So you knew about that?
I'm not blind and I'm not an idiot.
I knew that Dad's get-rich-quick scheme
would end up hurting someone, and for what?
You blame your father for Ellis's death?
I blame myself...
..for not putting a stop to it sooner.
We think there was someone else at the substation that night.
Did Ellis ever mention anyone?
No, like I said, he didn't know anyone apart from us.
OK. Thank you.
He knew at least one other person -
whoever he was sleeping with.
Ellis Baxter told Ivan
the whole operation had to stop, right?
So why was he stealing more electricity that...?
Oh, I've stepped in chewing gum!
Ew!
Seriously, who just leaves chewing gum lying around
for people to step in?
Inspector, we have something here.
Inspector...?
Oh, yeah?
The power company called.
They've been looking into the electricity theft
and discovered the amount of power stolen
was off the chart.
Why did they not notice that before?
Somebody had to have been covering it up,
and we think we know who.
This is three days ago, outside The Hub.
Ellis with Chayce, the electricity guy.
Ellis approached me about three months ago.
I was doing some routine maintenance at the substation.
He wanted access to it, to steal electricity?
I've got a young family to feed,
and this, this seemed like easy money.
But the amount of juice that rig was pulling was crazy.
I was finding it hard to cover up.
And then, turned out I wasn't needed any more.
Ellis was winding up the operation?
Promised to pay me out in TallyUm,
but he never got the chance.
Because you murdered him?
No, no. I... I-I couldn't have.
I was on shift when the substation blew.
I was nowhere near it.
Why would I kill Ellis?
He was the only one with access to the wallet.
I'm sorry...
The wallet?
Hardware wallet.
It's a device used to store digital currency.
Without that and the private key,
there's no way to trade the coin.
Like how Clifford keeps his starfruit in a warehouse
with a keypad lock.
So, without the wallet and the private key,
the TallyUm is worthless?
Since Ellis managed to fry himself to a crisp,
we're screwed.
His stupidity has cost us a fortune.
Wait, a fortune?
Ivan said there was only about ten grand mined.
Ivan's either lying to you or been lied to by Ellis.
The amount of juice that rig has pulled
must have mined at least a coin a day for three months.
That's 100 coins. That doesn't sound like much.
Do you know the price of TallyUm?
Some tech billionaires have invested into it,
and it's gone to the moon.
Just broke $2,500 per coin.
Ellis was sitting on about 250 grand.
But you needed the wallet.
What does it look like?
Nobody knows exactly.
I'll bet you've got some idea, though.
Someone broke into Petra McQuillan's car,
and they weren't looking for cash.
Y-Y-You think it was me? Hmm?
Prove it.
You left a calling card.
Now, we can have that tested for your DNA,
or you could just tell us now.
All right, yes, I was looking for the wallet.
It's just a glorified USB, really.
Figured Ellis might have given it to his girlfriend,
but if he did, I couldn't find it.
Somewhere out there is a flash drive
with a digital fortune on it.
Ellis had a favourite necklace.
It wasn't found at the crime scene.
I didn't take anything from his body,
if that's what you think.
Wait...
..you...you think that's the wallet?
The power company confirmed Mr Jones's alibi.
He was with several colleagues when the power surged.
And the postmortem's back.
Confirms what we already knew -
the victim died of a cardiac arrest
caused by a massive electric shock.
So, five people knew about the mining rig
and the abstraction theft,
and one of them's dead - Ellis Baxter.
And the other four all have alibis
so couldn't have been at the substation when he died.
Perhaps it's what it always looked like - an accident.
It's possible, but...
..why wasn't he wearing his insulating gloves?
He'd still be alive if he had been.
And we now know 250,000 reasons for wanting Ellis Baxter dead.
A digital fortune hidden, we suspect,
on the necklace taken from the victim's body.
It wasn't there when Chayce arrived at the crime scene,
so it couldn't have been the engineers or paramedics.
No, but there was someone who was there before them.
Ivan McQuillan.
Ellis was his golden goose. Why would he want to kill him?
It's like you said -
he had 250,000 reasons for wanting him dead.
And to grab that necklace.
Let's go.
Ellis's necklace? What about it?
It's missing. Petra insists he would never take it off.
Which implies he would have been wearing it when he died.
Oh, so you think I took it from his corpse?
His body was still smoking!
Why would I steal a bloody necklace anyway?
Because it's a hardware wallet
holding $250,000-worth of TallyUm.
Ha! 250...
Did Ellis never tell you the actual amount of coin
the rig was mining?
Ellis and Laurette took care of the technical side of things.
I'm just the ideas man.
Wait, you still think I had something to do with his death?
He was just about to become my son-in-law.
Maybe you found out he was having an affair.
Rubbish! Ellis adored Petra.
You could tell that just by the way he talked...
Do you know what? We're done here.
I'm not saying another word.
You know who the other woman is, don't you?
Enough. Put the camera away.
Don't you have anything else better to do than film 24/7?
Hmm? We film everything.
I will give you $10
if you let me use that camcorder for five minutes.
Hmm?
I didn't know about any affair, although it would explain
why Ellis and Petra had been arguing.
But he loved her.
He said as much after he proposed.
I love Petra. It's that simple.
Binary. I love Petra.
Who was he talking to?
It was Laurette, wasn't it?
I thought Laurette was just being protective
of her best friend, you know,
cos she was so shocked by the proposal.
Guess I was just naive.
- I think we're finished here. - Sir.
So, these kids have been filming all day, every day,
and I had a thought, and, uh...
Well, just look.
It's just kids playing.
Yeah, but look behind them.
It's Laurette on the street to the substation.
So, we now know that Laurette Duschamps
was at the substation with Ellis Baxter
on the day of his death.
And we also know she was having an affair with Ellis
behind her best friend's back.
Love triangles never end well.
Gets real messy, trust me.
I've had my experiences.
Laurette witnessed Ellis propose to Petra.
Now, if she was in love with him...
Jealousy's a strong motive.
What exactly do we know about her?
You said she had a troubled childhood.
Anything to suggest she might be capable of murder?
The Laurette I knew wouldn't hurt a fly,
let alone commit murder.
Look, even if Laurette was at the substation
with Ellis, he was alive when she left.
She was at The Hub with Ivan and Petra,
so she couldn't have killed him.
We still have two mysteries we can't explain -
why wasn't he wearing his insulating gloves,
and where is the missing necklace?
There's something else.
Earlier at The Hub,
I'm fairly sure that I saw Laurette,
and she saw me too.
It looked like she was running away.
We're gonna have to question her, Darlene.
Laurette?
Open up, honey.
I know you're scared,
but we just need to speak to you.
I'm sorry I ran away, Miss Curtis.
You're here about Ellis, right?
Well...
I'm the reason he's dead.
It wasn't an affair, not really.
It was a drunken one-night stand, then another,
and then it was...
.."Is this something real?" You know?
But Petra, I knew she suspected.
It was making her so miserable.
So I told him he had to make a choice.
Do you want me or Petra?
He chose her. That must have hurt.
He didn't choose Petra.
At least not at first.
He asked me to leave with him.
Said he'd booked two plane tickets.
He told me to pack and be ready.
But then he changed his mind, asked Petra to marry him.
It changed everything.
I confronted him.
I love Petra.
It's that simple.
Binary. I love Petra.
And that did hurt.
I went to the substation.
He was dismantling whatever he'd done
to steal the electricity.
Laurette? I'm sorry.
He told me he wasn't gonna throw
what he had with Petra away because of a mistake.
I didn't want to believe that I was a mistake.
I was desperate.
So I told him a lie.
What lie?
That I was pregnant...
..with his baby.
Part of me was stupid enough to think he might be happy.
But he wasn't?
He was horrified.
Demanded I get rid of it.
I think he regretted that, but...too late.
I was angry.
I wanted to hurt him.
What did you do?
I told him I was gonna tell Petra,
about the affair, the baby, everything.
He knew I was gonna take everything he loved away from him.
He begged me not to.
But I wanted him to suffer.
Laurette, just use... Laurette!
So I walked away.
Er...
He was alive when you left?
You didn't push him onto the wires?
Of course not.
I was at The Hub with Petra and Ivan when he died.
You said you're the reason Ellis is dead.
Why?
Isn't it obvious?
Ellis killed himself.
I didn't want to believe it,
but when I heard he wasn't wearing his gloves,
what other possible explanation is there?
He's dead because of me.
My threats, my lies...
You couldn't have known.
But I did.
I saw it in his eyes.
He came after me.
He gave me this.
He said I'd know what to do with it when the time came.
Now I do.
I can't take this.
Give it to Petra.
Tell her how sorry I am.
OK, sweetheart, I'm here for you.
What do we do with that, sir?
I suppose we do as Laurette asked
and give it to Petra McQuillan.
As Ivan said, there's nothing illegal about crypto mining.
Although, without a private key,
I don't see how anyone's gonna be able to access its contents.
Private key.
That's like a PIN number, right?
Only much, much bigger.
A private key is a set of 256 random numbers
written in binary.
Clifford Barnstable keeps his PIN number in his wallet.
Oh. Laurette?
Sleeping.
She's in shock, but the rest will help.
Well, I guess all our remaining questions are answered.
Ellis wasn't wearing gloves because he chose not to,
and we're now in possession of the missing necklace.
Nothing left to do except recommend the coroner rule
Ellis Baxter's death as suicide.
OK.
Careful, don't get too close.
Now, this, Harry, is a Cittarium pica,
or West Indian top shell.
Ah! Whoa, whoa!
Careful, careful!
Water and electricity do not...
..mix.
You would need a direct line for the current to go.
Now, that's an interesting thought.
Why did that come to mind?
So why wasn't he wearing his insulating gloves?
Oh, my God.
It can't be.
We were all here when the power went out.
He loved her.
He said as much after he proposed.
Everyone makes mistakes.
Do you know the price of TallyUm?
It's gone to the moon.
Clifford Barnstable keeps his PIN number in his wallet.
Naomi, can you get the team back in ASAP, please?
Ellis Baxter did not take his own life.
Had an epiphany, sir?
You know they say lightning doesn't strike twice?
Well, actually, in this case, I think it might have.
Ah-ha!
What is that, sir?
That is the key to this case, literally.
Let's gather the suspects.
This case begins and ends with power -
the theft of it, the use of it,
the abuse of it.
Ellis Baxter died at the electrical substation
barely 300 yards away.
It seemed pretty straightforward.
We knew how he died and when he died.
The consequences of it were felt all over Honore.
He was stealing electricity,
and he paid for it with his life.
There's no doubt Ellis was electrocuted.
The only question was,
how did he come into contact with the live wires
that became exposed during his abstraction theft,
and why was he not wearing the rubber insulating gloves
that would have protected him?
We thought perhaps it was simply an accident,
or maybe something more tragic -
a deliberate decision to take his own life.
That is ridiculous. Why would Ellis kill himself?
It's OK.
I can assure you Ellis didn't do this to himself.
Because the truth is,
Ellis Baxter was murdered...
..by one of you.
Um, how?
I mean, I don't know about this geezer,
but the three of us were here when the power went.
Well, we'll get to the how,
but first I want to talk about the why.
Which brings us to another kind of power.
Willpower.
The sheer will to plan,
commit and cover up a murder.
All of you had motive,
but only one of you had the willpower.
Perhaps it was a crime of passion.
Ellis had just asked Petra to marry him,
and she said yes,
even though she knew he'd been cheating on her.
I told you, I forgave him.
Even though you knew the woman was your best friend?
You told us you didn't know who the woman was,
but you did, didn't you?
Don't.
It didn't matter. He chose me.
It did matter,
because it was his love for you that cost him his life.
Ellis had secrets.
The biggest was the TallyUm his rig had mined wasn't worth
the few thousand dollars Ivan believed.
In fact, it was worth over $250,000.
Only one other person worked that out.
The only guy who could read the meter.
But the amount of juice that rig was pulling was crazy.
I knew he was sitting on a fortune,
but I never wanted him dead.
I just wanted my share.
I believe you.
Unfortunately for you,
the murderer had already planned to steal the money
long before you put two and two together.
It was somebody who'd gained access
to the most important piece of information -
the private key to Ellis's hardware wallet.
You, Laurette.
You think I murdered Ellis? I do, yes.
I gave you the hardware wallet.
You mean this?
Yes, it certainly did seem like a noble sacrifice,
but as you were perfectly aware,
without the private key,
no-one would ever be able to access anything on this anyway.
Bad news for you - we found the private key.
Darlene?
Access to the wallet revealed the TallyUm was sold
early this morning,
the money moved to a private offshore account,
under the name...
..Laurette Duschamps.
We don't know why Ellis never told Ivan
what the TallyUm was worth.
Maybe he was considering keeping it for himself.
He'd come to Saint Marie a burnout
who'd lost everything.
Now, in the space of three months, he created
over a quarter of a million dollars
seemingly out of thin air.
Nobody else knew about it.
Except you.
Because not only were you and Ellis in a physical relationship,
but you and he managed the entire crypto operation together.
Ellis and Laurette took care of the technical side of things.
We assume you planned to leave together,
take the money and run,
but Ellis was having second thoughts.
He was, in fact, in love.
So you forced him to choose -
you and the money,
or Petra and his life here on Saint Marie.
Do you want me...or Petra?
Now, when Ellis asked Petra to marry him,
that was a shock for you, sure,
but it wasn't motive for murder.
No, it was Ellis's determination
to come clean about the money that signed his death warrant.
The last time I saw him, when he proposed,
he said he had something important to tell me.
$250,000 is a lot of money.
Divided by five, however...
You wanted it all for yourself.
But first, you needed the private key.
How? The first rule of crypto is,
don't share your passwords.
Well, we believe that when Laurette made Ellis choose,
he realised Petra meant more to him than the money.
Just didn't care any more.
And so he simply told Laurette his private key.
It's that simple.
Binary. I love Petra.
"I love Petra..."
..repeated to form 256 binary numbers
printed on the back of this card.
Now all you needed was the wallet hanging from Ellis's neck.
But Laurette was here when Ellis died.
No.
Laurette was here at The Hub during the power surge
that electrocuted Ellis,
but that's not when Ellis died.
Is it?
We thought the time of death had to be 21.27
because that's when the power cut happened.
But in fact, Ellis was murdered much earlier,
at approximately 19.00 hours.
When Ellis told you his private key,
he thought he had nothing to lose.
But now you did.
You wanted that money.
All of it.
But for that, you needed the hardware wallet.
So you followed Ellis to the substation...
..as he dismantled the abstraction materials.
You pretended that you were upset
that he had chosen Petra. Laurette!
But you were in fact waiting for the right moment.
And then you struck.
And you took what you came for.
If Ellis was pushed onto the wires at 7pm,
then why was there no power cut?
Mr Jones?
Ellis knew what he was doing.
When stealing electricity,
he'd disabled the protective measures
that would cause the system to trip when it registered a fault.
He never had a chance.
And now you'd committed murder,
you needed all of Honore
to know that Ellis Baxter had been electrocuted,
but not when he'd been electrocuted.
First, you earthed the wires.
Then you placed his body
to the exposed but not yet live wires.
And with all the pieces in place,
you made your way back here to The Hub
and prepared for an engagement party
to celebrate the very man you'd just murdered.
My little girl getting married...
All that was left was to create the accident that would become
Ellis Baxter's apparent cause of death.
Electricity flows in a straight line.
It needs order, structure.
Or it can be rather unstable indeed.
And you knew exactly how to create that instability,
very simply,
with a bucket and water...
..both of which were readily available
nearby the extension cable
that was plugged into the mining rig storage unit.
We believe, when the time was right,
you slipped upstairs,
being very careful to avoid the security cameras.
You unplugged the live cable from the storage unit,
knowing that it was still connected to the substation,
and then you plunged it into the bucket of water.
The flow of electricity was reversed.
It was sent hurtling back to the substation,
creating a massive short-out and explosion.
All of which created the illusion
that it was the short-out that killed Ellis Baxter
and gave you an almost perfect alibi.
Laurette? You were like family to us.
It wasn't personal.
Then why? You know why.
Same reason your dad wanted to mine crypto.
Same reason Ellis stole electricity.
Same reason you turned a blind eye.
Money.
Life-changing amounts of money,
all created from nothing,
out of thin air.
I wanted what was mine.
Darlene?
I always liked you, Miss Curtis.
I'm sorry...
..for lying to you.
Laurette Duschamps,
I'm arresting you on the suspicion
of the murder of Ellis Baxter.
Come.
Sir?
I want to apologise.
What for?
Laurette.
Oh. Sit down, Darlene.
She used me.
And I let her.
I let my personal feelings cloud my objectivity
as a police officer.
Look, Darlene...
..sometimes people are just...
..just...bad apples.
You can accept it,
you can even prepare for it,
but you should never expect it.
Your empathy is your strength.
Don't ever apologise for that.
Thank you. Thank you.
Commissioner.
Wise words, Inspector.
Trust is a precious commodity.
Um, I've made some calls,
and Rebecca Walmslow
has no unsupervised access to the internet.
So it was just a blog fan?
Sunset Chaser is no more dangerous
or malicious than any other random stranger on the web.
Thanks, sir.
That makes me feel a lot better.
Good.
I reckon it's officially sundowner o'clock.
Fancy a cocktail?
Why, when he's lying on the floor, staring death in the face,
does Ray Saunders call this guy and not this guy?
I know what you did. And I know what you did.
Well, then I guess we'll both keep our mouths shut.
"We'd like to offer you a place in our school on a scholarship."
I want to do good by Jocelyn,
but I don't want to not be a police officer.
You betrayed me, and I am coming for you.
Marlon, talk to me.