Silent Witness

Don't get me wrong, King's Cross could be hell on earth.

How do you mean?

It was a place of extremes.

You know, I can remember one night

a runaway gave birth right on the platform,

and then an hour later, a man was stabbed to death

behind the coalhouse. It was a madhouse!

But there was community.

All of life was here.

Almost sounds like you miss it.

Hmm.

What happened?

Oh. Um...

Despite being a model of Victorian build quality,

the structure suffers from subsidence,

not helped by decades of construction

and track reverberation.

Plus, there's a deep warren of passages,

tunnels, shafts under our feet...

Nikki Alexander. Jack Hodgson.

DI Steve Tudor.

Right. Um... Layouts,

hard hats...

..and, if you have them, steel-toe-capped boots.

No. Me neither.

Used to be the Railway Tavern.

Dates back to the 19th century.

Survived the big refurb? Oh, yeah, it's listed.

Do you know the patch?

Yeah. King's Cross was my beat for years.

First in uniform, then in plain clothes.

If memory serves, this was variously used as a storeroom,

as a shelter for rough sleepers,

and somewhere the more resourceful sex workers brought their punters.

Thanks.

It's an old hatch.

Someone sealed it over.

Cool and dry - perfect for a cellar.

And for stalling decomposition.

Presents as male.

Massive injuries to the top of the skull.

Fall?

No obvious signs of blood in the surrounding area.

No ID. Some sort of fob.

Got blood here.

What is that?

Hmm.

Some kind of handcart, I think.

Maybe he was thrown down through the hatch?

I've got more blood in here, Nikki. On a mattress.

I've got red-orange dust embedded in the skull.

Brick?

Yep. Maybe.

Hair all over the mattress.

Can of Mace.

Manufactured in Illinois.

Nikki?

Looks new, the padlock.

Newer than the door anyway.

How many?

Six, I think.

Maybe seven.

Eight.

We need to take control now.

We're not just smack in the middle of London,

we're in King's Cross Station.

If one photo of one body gets posted online, we've failed.

So we start as we mean to go on.

Eight bodies, a challenging location...

I reckon we're in mass disaster territory.

DVI protocol, the works.

I want to activate an emergency mortuary -

that means a call to the coroner.

I'll make a similar call to the Commissioner's office.

Somewhere, there will be a plan

for dealing with something like this. Might even work.

I'll get the area secured. No-one in or out without authority.

I want a moat. Inner and outer cordons,

signed in and out at both.

If the Commissioner agrees with us, he'll throw in a drawbridge.

Nikki Alexander, lead pathologist.

Jack Hodgson, crime scene manager.

Gabriel Folukoya, pathologist and director of the Lyell Centre.

Malcolm Jones, former station coordinator

and curator of the King's Cross Museum.

DI Steve Tudor. That's it.

Chief Superintendent Sheila Court,

Senior Investigating Officer.

This Gold Group meeting is officially open.

For the avoidance of doubt, mass disaster status has been designated.

My priority is to secure the integrity of the forensic

and pathology investigation, so whatever you need.

Right. Well, to ensure that integrity,

I'd like to set up an emergency mortuary here at the station.

Fine with me.

We haven't had a chance to discuss it, but in principle it's OK.

My main concern is cross-contamination.

We can collect trace evidence material at the scene

before the bodies are moved. It's a bit unorthodox,

but this is the part we can't repeat or revisit.

Agreed. All that makes sense.

We'll need secure access,

running water, power and lighting.

The temperature will ideally be adjustable

and ventilation sufficient.

Couple of options come to mind.

We'll also need adequate storage space

for the securing of the human remains,

evidence and property.

OK. With eight bodies, I imagine you'll want

to spread the load, bring in more pathologists?

Actually, no.

In the Shipman case, all the PMs were done by the same pathologist.

And it's my view that, from a continuity-of-evidence perspective,

you want one set of eyes on all the bodies.

And I'll be working alongside Gabriel to speed up the process.

OK. Whoever did this has got away with it for ten years plus.

They've had a free pass. Not any more.

Somewhere in that basement's a clue that's going to unmask this person

and bring them to justice. We can't miss it.

Sorry if I overstepped the mark just now.

Would've been good to discuss, but...all fine.

We can do eight bodies. We can.

But if we make one mistake, drop one ball,

the wisdom of the decision will be questioned,

and rightly so.

Got a candidate for the mortuary.

Despite the face-lift, the station is still associated

with a high number of missing persons.

My focus is on the two years

prior to the building's renovation in June '09,

prioritising medium and high-risk cases

in which CID got involved.

If this isn't suitable, we have options.

Power points, pipework, heat sources all listed.

Thank you, Malcolm. Thanks.

Divide and rule?

I kit this place out, you return to the coalface?

Agreed.

Can we clear this area, please?

Consider it done.

I want to get this body out now,

keep him separate and do his postmortem first.

That makes sense. We have a hoist en route.

We treat that room as a separate crime scene.

Before we go in there or touch anything,

we map and photograph the bodies' positions.

From the way they're positioned and other factors,

our working theory is that the bodies at the back were left first.

So the furthest body we're calling Body 1.

And the one nearest the door Body 7?

Exactly.

Operating a last-in, first-out methodology,

we'll now begin removing these bodies.

Body 7 presents as male.

His throat appears to have been cut.

He's wearing what looks like a yellow-metal ring

on his wedding finger.

He's wearing a tracksuit

and...Nike trainers.

There we go. Good.

Body 6 also presents as male.

There's a gag in his mouth.

And rope around his neck.

Hands are tied with rope too.

Which extends up his back...

..encircling his neck in a noose.

What is that about?

Body 5 wears a polyester top

with some sort of emblem.

A football shirt maybe.

Body 4 presents as female,

shoulder-length auburn hair.

She's wearing jewellery - earrings, necklace.

Whoa. Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa.

Does that include a gold chain necklace

with a four-leaf clover pendant?

Yes, it does.

All right. The necklace was listed as identifying property

belonging to the American tourist Judy Holmes.

I mean, obviously, it's a secondary identifier

but height, hair colour, they all fit, too, so...

In all likelihood, we've identified our first victim.

What else do we know about Judy?

Um... Her bag was found in bushes by the Regent's Canal

half a mile away. CID pulled out all the stops, dragging the canal.

Their thinking was it was a mugging gone bad.

I retrieved a can of Mace manufactured in Illinois.

Take it we have her prints and DNA?

It's all logged in the misper report and on the missing persons database.

And lift.

Body 3 has a reddish-grey beard...

..and is wearing what looks like a military coat...

..which is caked with blood.

Hair colouring's a visual match

to hairs I recovered on the mattress back there.

DNA'll confirm.

So was this bloke sleeping rough down here when he was killed?

Turf war?

Body 2 has been left on top of Body 1.