Silent Witness Series 12 Episodes 9 & 10 - The Lost Child

It wasn’t quite another raid on religion this week but we did have a Christian, who was embroiled in a pedo case though! Before anyone takes offence, he didn’t do it!

A young lad is found dead, clogging up a drainage pipe, by his headmaster. The lad had befriended another boy, who was now missing. Evidence is found that the boy was sexually abused and the men in the frame are the missing boy’s ‘uncle’ and their landlord – a convicted ‘dirty bastard’.

The headmaster of the school also happens to be Nikki’s former teacher and we get a nice back-story for the pretty pathologist. Apparently she ran away from school, unhappy at everything and the teacher, Noel Hopkins, retrieved her and was her ‘mentor’.

Meanwhile Harry and Leo are on a ‘Berracane hunt’, after the drowned lad was found with the chemical in his body. So it’s a case of ‘find the chemical, find the boy’, simple then, isn’t it!

The net to catch the nonce is widened and after the revelation that Hopkins is acquainted with the landlord, the weird Christian (the dead boy’s stepfather) and the fact he had a phone call from the uncle, put him in the frame. Oh and the uncle is found dead after being hit by a train, when he was on his way to meet Hopkins. He’s that badly disfigured – he’s mistaken for the missing boy.

Nikki doesn’t believe that Hopkins is behind it but that doesn’t stop her questioning herself when Hopkins gives her some home truths. Is she ‘The Lost Child’ this story is about? As the police learn that it was the uncle that was killed, they have to let Hopkins go. But that doesn’t stop a hate mob, drawing graffiti on his property and firebombing his house. Comparisons with this can be made to real life events, when innocent people are attacked, like the Paediatrician, who was attacked by a group of toothless simpletons who believed that he was a Paedophile!

Anyway I digress, we learn that the missing boy isn’t missing after all. The ‘uncle’ and the ‘boy’ are the same person. It’s clear that the landlord made him pose as a 12-year old boy, in order to lure young lads to the pair’s ‘secret hiding place’. Unfortunately, the only evidence is photos of the landlord and the man ‘at it’. But landlord will get is comeuppance as he has Berracane poisoning and not long to live. Sweet justice, wouldn’t you say?

It was another well written episode, Emile Fox (Nikki) and especially guest star Reece Dindsdale (Hopkins) were superb, at acting this harrowing story out.

8/10

Next Time: It’s the last story of the series and the BBC has decided to splash out on a trip abroad. Is it Las Vegas? No, it isn’t - it’s in Africa, which is a shame – those CSI chumps need a good kick up the arse!