“Episode #1.6” is the sixth and final episode of season one of Hard Sun.
In the previous episode, Hicks had decided to stand with Renko against the woman from MI5, as he couldn’t countenance them killing Daniel. The latter said she simply wanted for things to remain normal for as long as they could. So, Renko and Hicks still have the flash drive with the Hard Sun data on it, and have probably made more trouble for themselves in some ways in the long run. At the end of the episode, Renko told Hicks that she knew he hadn’t killed Butler. At which point Hicks dropped a bombshell; he admitted he had and said he thought Renko knew that.
Now, something doesn’t quite add up here. Hicks has seemed to be possibly bent and dodgy, but the killing of his friend in apparent cold blood doesn’t seem to match what has been seen of his behaviour so far. Nor does the dead man’s wife saying something about knowing what Hicks did for them.
This episode starts one year earlier, with Hicks in a cemetery. There are cuts to Hicks confronting DCI Alex Butler on a bridge, saying he knew what the latter did, as he saw it in a video on a laptop, reflected in a mirror in a bedroom. Hicks tells Alex that no-one can ever found out what the latter did. Butler says that it’s over and Hicks is hiding a gun in the cemetery, presumably the one that killed Butler. Back in the present day, Renko is retrieving the hidden gun.
Renko, at night and dressed in black, pulls a balaclava over her face and runs to a house and picks the lock. Inside, she places the gun below a heating grate, hiding as a man comes downstairs. DCS Bell is – rather physically – talking to someone about Butler. The latter says that he knows everything, including the location of the gun that killed Butler. It seems that Renko paid this informant to speak to Bell. It also looks like she has done this with Hicks’ knowledge, so presumably Hicks told her the full story and Renko thought that the reason for him killing Butler was a good one.
There is a woman in a car by some water. She is writing a note when she sees a man watching from the other side of the water. The car is found empty and there is no sign of a body. Something seems to strike DS Mooney about this.
It turns out that the house where the gun was hidden is the home of the MI5 woman – Grace Morrigan, as DCS Bell says as he turns up on her doorstep with a warrant to search the premises. Possibly the first time her name has actually been mentioned. Renko and Hicks are framing her for Butler’s murder. It seems they have decided to get a little more pro-active with dealing with Grace. Hicks is given the job of getting Grace to confess before MI5 finds out she is locked up, turns up and springs her. Grace is keeping the arrest quiet from MI5 herself, because if they find out, she will be compromised.
What made DS Mooney suspicious earlier is that there have been six suicides in seven weeks. In every case a handwritten note was left on the car’s dashboard, weighed down by the pen used to write the note, and no body was found. Mooney thinks that someone is killing people who think they want to die. Mooney says that the man exists, because he has spoken to the man on a suicide message board. The man signs himself with the Unicode for a sun cross.
With everyone else concentrating on Grace, Mooney decides to go after the killer himself, by the looks of it by sending him a message suggesting he is ready to die, so that they can meet. This could quite easily go very badly wrong. When the others discover this, the matter of Grace has to be put on hold as they go hunting for Mooney.
There’s a bit when a license plate leads to someone called Herbert West. Possibly a deliberate reference to the short story by H. P. Lovecraft, “Herbert West – Reanimator”.
At the end of the episode we finally learn what the Hard Sun actually is. It does not look survivable.