Harry Wild

Let's plan something nice for the weekend,

seeing as I'm abandoning you for the week.

What do you fancy? Dinner and a movie?

- Date night? - Yeah, a date night.

I think if we're going to do a date night, then we should stay in.

And you can wear that pretty blue dress.

I'll get some strawberries and cream.

Are you cheap-skating me?

I'm happy to buy some wine, too.

Off to work with you! I love you.

Love you, too! Miss you already. See you Saturday.

I can't wait.

How's it going?

There you go.

Good woman, Mam.

You're doing brilliantly.

How drunk were you, Chris?

Emma?

Show me that tattoo again.

Bev Lyons.

Bev and Chris, what is your story?

Jeez! What did that melon ever do to you?

- Melon? Nothing. Men... Ah! - Oh!

I take it you had that chat with Harry B, then?

Fergus, relationships are overrated.

I mean, since when did "fun" become a dirty word?

I mean, we agree that we are grown-ups.

It doesn't need to be any more than it is.

And then one of you wants the other one to move to Australia.

And who lives in Australia, anyway?

Have you seen the size of the spiders there?

No, I am perfectly happy where I am.

Yeah, me, too, though I might just move over to this side of the table.

It's a bit safer.

Look, relax. I'm not going to hurt anybody.

- You get it. You miss Lola, right? - What?

No. Not even thinking about her.

Or that bloke she's seeing. Ryan.

Big, big, strong Ryan.

You don't even know if she's seeing him!

Oh.

Maybe he's a tactile guy?

Oh, please! Anyway, I don't care, right.

I have a plan. I'm going to move on with my life.

Meet new people...

Concentrate on work, right? Like this case.

Yeah, well, don't get too excited. He told me barely anything on the phone.

And he cuts up dead people for a living.

He's probably nuts.

I'm picturing a fat little man who smells of formaldehyde.

Harry.

Thank you so much for agreeing to meet me.

Any friend of Jordan's is a friend of ours.

Oh...

Kitchen's just through here.

Tattoos are pretty common, though, right?

I mean, fair enough, maybe not musical bars.

These weren't just any musical bars.

Clair De Lune.

Debussy.

Oh, I love that one!

Here, what's that called when they do that on a piano?

Trill.

At the end of Clair De Lune,

there are four bars of music with trills.

Chris O'Neill, that's the dead man,

he had the third bar tattooed on him.

And the previous body you remembered,

Bev Lyons, she had the second?

Yes, and she died six months ago.

So, two musical bars, two accidental deaths -

one by drowning, another by a road accident?

- That's too much chance. - Is it, though?

Couldn't it be just one of those crazy quirks?

I considered that until...

Until you wondered about the first bar.

Yes. So, I went through all the old files from my predecessor,

well over 400, until I found this.

- Wow! - Holy shit, that's not...?

This post-mortem is from 18 months ago.

Same section of Clair De Lune.

The opening bar.

No way?

Her name is Jess Boylan.

Operation gone wrong. Another accidental death.

OK, that is weird.

But it's not that easy, though to make a murder look accidental.

True, but drowning's a good cover.

And Chris, he was severely drunk.

Enough so I could believe he had ethanol pumped into his veins.

And Jess Boylan, she died on the table.

Entirely normal,

but if somebody interfered with a medical device...

Totally doable.

But it's unlikely that there were three killers.

More likely, if it's true, one person behind it all.

Do you know if these tattoos were done before or after death?

- Are you able to tell? - Yeah.

Not long before, in all cases.

Three bars out of four? And if they were murdered--

There's another one to come.

That's my fear.

I have no time to lose.

That's a lot of tattoo shops!

I rarely get to talk about Jess these days.

People allow you so much time to grieve and then, well...

I'm a primary school teacher, so it's a big smile every day.

18 months or 18 days, loss is still loss.

Jess and I met when we were teenagers.

Our folks thought we were too young to settle down, but...

...it didn't matter to us.

But, um... why are you so interested?

I work as a consultant for the state pathologist's office.

We're investigating the phenomenon of accidental deaths.

Jess died during an operation, wasn't it?

Routine?

Not at all. She, er... She elected to get a tummy tuck.

- Oh. - It was insane.

You never met a more beautiful woman, but...

no matter what I said, she thought she was overweight.

I wouldn't have changed a hair on her body.

She scheduled the surgery in secret.

And then it went wrong and Jess bled to death.

They said it was a one-in-a-million possibility.

Ironic, given she was one in a million.

She had a tattoo, didn't she?

A musical signature?

When did she get that tattoo done, and why?

While I was away.

I'm not sure why. She didn't play.

I guess it was a part of her changing the way she looked.

Jess was into art. These are her paintings on the wall.

Oh, beautiful.

Do you happen to know anyone called Chris O'Neill or Bev Lyons?

Mm-mm.

Did Jess? I mean, could they be work colleagues or...?

Jess worked from home.

She sold drawings to animation studios.

I've never heard of a Chris or a Bev.

Do you know where she had that tattoo done?

No.

Is this really all for some study?

They're just weirdly specific questions.

Trust me, it's all related.

- Not my work. - Of course they're not

Look, I've been doing this years.

Right.

Real artists, they have a signature.

And these? Well, they weren't done by the same person.

Well, at least this one.

This was done by one person in particular.

See, tattooing is like art.

You can spot an expert at work

and this one here, this is an expert.

See the little flick at the end of that line?

That's an A.

That's Jess Boylan's tattoo. Have you ever heard of her?

No, I can tell you who did her tattoo, though.

Apollo Connors. He did one of mine.

Thanks, man. This is brilliant!

Yeah, you have a problem, though.

- I do? - Apollo is, er...

odd.

I love what I do, it's art.

Apollo, though?

He thinks he's Michelangelo painting the Sistine Chapel.

Better than, to be honest.

Trust me, I'm used to it not being easy.

Are we doing or what this, Setanta?

I'm slipping into a coma here.

So impatient! Now, I'm gonna make it hurt.

Don't leave a message. I won't bother to reply.

Hi, this is Fergus Reid.

I wanted to speak to you about Jess Boylan.

My number should have come up there--

OK.

- Hi, Harry? - Fergus?

I might have found our tattoo artist.

We might have a job getting to speak to him.

Well, if you're at a loose end, you can visit one of the families.

I've just done Jess Boylan's husband.

And he's never heard of Bev or Chris.

Right, so no help, then?

Other than being completely grief-stricken

and reminding me why we do this job in the first place, no help.

If we can't find a link between these victims

I don't know how we'll identify a potential fourth.

OK, just, ah, send me the deets of who I should chase up on.

Details in-coming.

Honestly! Second-year English grad?

Yeah, yeah. Whatever.

Okay.

Tell me, just looking for Sam?

Cheers.

Sam Robertson?

You were engaged to Bev Lyons?

What of it?

Just need to ask a few questions.

Why would I want to talk about that bitch?

OK.