Recap / Shakespeare And Hathaway Private Investigators S 2 E 10

Too Cold For Hell

Porter

This place is too cold for hell. I’ll devil-porter it no further: I had thought to have let in some of all professions, that go the primrose way to the everlasting bonfire.

- Macbeth, Act II, Scene 3

Shakespeare & Hathaway are hired by a young married couple whose belongings were stolen by a fraudulent moving company.

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This episode provides examples of:

• All for Nothing: Marlowe confides to Lu that Frank was dismissed from the police after Taking the Heat for her mistake: planting evidence to secure a conviction against a pedophile who'd abducted and murdered a six-year-old boy. Ironically, the pedophile was himself murdered in jail while awaiting his trial, so she could have spared herself and Frank the trouble.
• Apologetic Attacker: Billy the Brick "borrows" DI Marlowe's car to make his getaway, but leaves it at a convenient location, with a note apologizing for the busted wing mirror.
• Awesome McCoolname: William Porters, a.k.a., "Billy the Brick", awards himself the nickname "Billy Two Bricks" after simultaneously knocking out a mobster and a thug threatening Frank and DS Keeler (with a brick in each hand). He even leaves the name on a Calling Card left on DI Marlowe's car, which he ditches after "borrowing" it to make his getaway.
• Awesomeness by Analysis: Without leaving his mancave, Spider is able to analyze the sounds on Frank's panicked phone call to Marlowe, narrow down his likely location, and ping the data to Marlowe's (encrypted, police-issue) satnav.
• Aw, Look! They Really Do Love Each Other: Frank, Billy the Brick, and DS Keeler are all trapped in a refrigerated shipping container, slowly freezing to death:
  • Keeler starts to berate Billy for being a worthless criminal, causing Frank to hotly speak up and say that Billy may be no angel, but he's done better than could have been expected considering that the deck was stacked against him from the day he was born (to a heroin addict mother who overdosed shortly after giving birth to him). Billy warmly says he's always thought of Frank as a surrogate dad. Keeler scoffs, but Frank puts a fatherly hand on Billy's.
  • Keeler likewise scoffs that Luella will be of any use in tracking them down, and Frank angrily says "the ex-hairdresser" is a better detective than Keeler will ever be.
  • For all their antagonism, Frank throws himself in front of Keeler when it looks like Mortimer is about to shoot him.
  • After Frank is rescued, Lu hugs Frank warmly.
    Frank: What was that for?
    Luella: Nothing.
• Crazy-Prepared: Frank keeps a burner phone stuffed down his sock, which he uses to call Luella after Claude Mortimer confiscates his main one.
• Dark Action Girl: Claude Mortimer's chief henchwoman, Mercy.
• Department of Redundancy Department: How Billy happens to know about the stages of hypothermia:
  Billy: I saw this documentary, Trapped In A Freezer. About these guys who got trapped in a freezer.
• The Ditz: Anthony and Bianca Percy are a perfectly nice young couple, but neither strikes Frank and Lu as terribly bright:
  Anthony: He just disappeared into air.
  Bianca: Into thin air, dear.
  Anthony: Yeah, into air.
  • Bianca, likewise, has no idea that her "Uncle Cuddles" is a notorious international gangster, as is most of that side of her family, despite the family surname "Mortimer" ringing instant bells with Frank and the Arden CID.
  • Although they have both met Sebastian before at Frank and Lu's office, he needs only a minimal disguise to enter their home undercover as an interviewer for the BBC interested in their family history.
  • At the end, Anthony and Bianca unwittingly confess to Frank and Lu that they've been sitting on a stash of uncut diamonds worth £3 million because they mistook them for decorative pebbles and "recycled" them by adorning the bottom of their goldfish bowl.
• Do Wrong, Right: Marlowe confesses to Luella that Frank was dismissed from the police force after Taking the Heat for her mistake: planting evidence to secure a conviction against the murderer of a six-year-old boy, after a legal challenge to the outsourced police lab made the DNA evidence unusable. Frank knew what Marlowe was going to do, and he told her: "Don't be stupid... but if you do it, don't get caught." Unfortunately, she did, and she was.
• Even Bad Men Love Their Mamas:
  • Played With for Claude Mortimer. The MacGuffin of the episode is an urn in the shape of an angel that holds the ashes of a young wife's beloved grandmother. She honestly has no idea that her Uncle "Cuddles", who gave her the urn, is a violent international gangster, who will go to any lengths to recover it after it's stolen - not because it contains his mother's ashes, but rather because it also contains his stash of uncut diamonds worth £3 million.
  • Billy admits to Frank and Lu that he only stole the urn from the Percys' boxes because he needed a birthday gift for his foster mother.
• Even Evil Has Standards: Billy "the Brick" unwittingly set in motion the events of the episode by nicking an angel sculpture from his boss's latest haul of stolen goods, but only because he wanted something nice for his foster mother's birthday. When he realized the sculpture was an urn containing a deceased person's ashes, he immediately placed it (with all respect) on a grave in the local cemetery (unfortunately, returning it to the original owner would have been awkward).
• Fluffy the Terrible: Bianca Percy honestly has no idea that her uncle Claude Mortimer, a.k.a. "Uncle Cuddles", is a violent international gangster.
• Framing the Guilty Party: Part of Marlowe and Hathaway's Dark and Troubled Past. Marlowe planted evidence to frame a pedophile who murdered a young boy after the original evidence was tainted, and Frank took the heat for her.
• Hiding in Plain Sight: Antony and Bianca Percy found a stash of uncut diamonds in the base of her grandmother's urn and immediately took them for the kind of pebbles one buys in a pet shop.
• Idiosyncratic Episode Naming: The episode title is taken from Macbeth, spoken by a character who shares his name with Billy the Brick.
• Innocently Insensitive: While locked in the container, Frank makes some disparaging remarks to Keeler about not being father material. What he doesn't know is that Keeler's wife is pregnant with his first child and they've previously had a miscarriage.
• Interrogated for Nothing: Claude Mortimer shoots Florian Fortes when the latter is unable to tell him where "it" is. Later, after recovering "it" (the urn containing his mother's ashes), he returns in a fury and demands to know where "they" are. Frank, Keeler, and Billy honestly have no idea what he's talking about, but he's on the verge of shooting them when The Cavalry arrives.
• It Makes Sense in Context:
  Frank: And the moral of this story is, Billy? Don't nick a mob boss's dead mother!"
• It Was with You All Along: Claude Mortimer is enraged when the urn containing his mother's ashes is stolen from his niece by a gang of fraudulent movers, and then even more enraged when the urn is recovered - minus his stash of uncut diamonds that he was keeping safe in case he needed to flee the country. When questioned, the niece and her husband say they noticed how heavy the urn was and found a false bottom weighted with what they thought were pebbles, so they used them to spruce up the bottom of their goldfish "Julius's" bowl. Since they removed the "pebbles" well before moving, and the fish bowl was the only thing the phony movers didn't take away, "Uncle Cuddles" could have saved himself a whole lot of trouble.
• I Was Never Here: After finishing her story of how Frank was dismissed from the police, Marlowe adds to Lu, "of course, if you repeat any of this, we're both going to deny it."
• Jerkass: DS Joe Keeler through and through. Even after being rescued, he still insists on placing Billy under arrest, and making clear that his low opinion of Frank hasn't improved any after their recent shared hardship (or perhaps because of it, after Frank's Innocently Insensitive moment).
• Let Off by the Detective: After Billy rescues Frank and Keeler from Claude Mortimer, Keeler insists on arresting Billy, but Lu fakes an alarm that lets Billy slip away. Later, when Frank and Lu are delivering Mortimer's "runaway fund" diamonds to the police, he withholds them for a second, asking for news on Billy. Marlowe and Keeler don't respond, but their silence implies that they have stopped looking for Billy, and Frank hands over the diamonds.
• Locked in a Freezer: Frank, DS Keeler, and Billy the Brick are locked in a refrigerated shipping container.
• Like an Old Married Couple: Instead of sending Sebastian in undercover, Frank and Lu identify the fraudulent mover by playing the part of a divorcing couple in the process of dividing their household. Their Snark-to-Snark Combat is played to perfection, and their "mark" never questions that they're married.
  Frank: Hey! You're not getting the lawn mower!
  Lu: Yes, I am, you bought me that for my birthday!
  Frank: Yeah, because I knew you wouldn't want one!
  Lu: Fine! You keep it, I'm going to get a gardener... with a six-pack.
• Line-of-Sight Alias: While they are perusing local newspapers for ads placed by the fraudulent movers, Sebastian has a paper open to a review of a recent production of The Taming of the Shrew. When the suspect turns up at Luella's residence, she introduces herself as "Kate Minola" and Frank as her soon-to-be-ex-husband "Peter."
• Minor Crime Reveals Major Plot: A case involving the theft of a married couple's belongings leads to Frank and Lu netting an international gangster and his £3 million stash of uncut diamonds.
• Moral Myopia: When Frank worries aloud whether the urn is still on the grave where Billy left it, Billy blithely declares:
  Billy: Of course it is! Who'd nick someone else's ashes?
• More Expendable Than You: Frank was dismissed from the police force after Taking the Heat for Christina Marlowe's mistake. Marlowe believes that, among other reasons, Frank knew that he'd never be promoted past Detective Inspector because of his problems with authority, but believed that Marlowe had the potential to go much higher. This expression of faith only makes her more driven to succeed and conscious of how much she owes him.
• Needle in a Stack of Needles:
  • Billy the Brick admits to Frank that he left the MacGuffin on a grave in the local cemetery; it was dark, but he remembers the name on the tombstone. Frank sarcastically asks how useful that is, when the cemetery has upwards of 19,000 "residents." Lu looks online and says the cemetery has a handy app for finding a particular grave.
    Billy: I thought we could spread out...
    Frank: 19,000 divided by 3 equals no way, Billy!
  • When Luella and Christina find the industrial park where Frank, Keeler and Billy are being held prisoner, they are distraught to see thousands of identical shipping containers in a row, far too many to search before the trio freeze to death.
• Recurring Character: Billy "The Brick" Porters reappears after Series One's "Toil and Trouble", and Spider reappears from the Series One finale "Ill Met By Moonlight".
• Robbing the Mob Bank: Florian Fortes ran a fraudulent moving service that allowed him to steal other people's valuables. This backfired when his latest client turns out to (unknowingly) be the niece of a violent international mobster, who entrusted the niece with the urn containing his mother's ashes.
• Shamu Fu: Frank, Billy the Brick and DS Keeler are locked in a refrigerated shipping container. When the crooks return, Billy throws a frozen fish in the face of one of them and escapes in the confusion.
  • Billy also uses a frozen lobster's claws to saw through the zip-ties around their hands, which works despite Keeler's skepticism.
• Shout-Out: Spider hacks into Marlowe's police radio and identifies himself by the alias, "Aragog"; after helping to identify Frank and Keeler's likely location, Spider pings the information to the satnav in Marlowe's police car (which she emphatically points out he should not be able to do), then signs off with "May the Force be with you."
• Significant Anagram: Frank and Lu are hired to find a fraudulent removal man. His aliases are all anagrams: Foster, Forest, Froste, Softer, etc. They soon identify him as Florian Fortes.
• Stating the Simple Solution: Played With when Spider identifies the model of jet that passed over Frank and Keeler's location by the sound of its engine.
  Marlowe: How could he possibly know that?
  Spider: I asked a rocket scientist. It's all the same theory, apparently.
• Taking the Heat: Frank did this for Christina, which is how he lost his job with the Arden Police.
• Themed Aliases: Frank and Lu are hired to find a fraudulent removal man. His aliases are all anagrams: Foster, Forest, Froste, Softer, etc. They soon identify him as Florian Fortes.
• Too Much Information: Frank, DS Keeler, and Billy the Brick are locked in a refrigerated shipping container. When Keeler asks how long it will take them to freeze to death, Billy says he saw a documentary about men in the exact same scenario, and it took them about 45 minutes. He then goes on to describe the stages of advanced hypothermia, including "lethargy, confusion... paradoxical undressing." Keeler and Frank both tell Billy he can shut up now.
• Trail Of Breadcrumbs: While being hustled to the shipping container, Frank drops his map of the cemetery and mashes it into the mud with his shoe. Luella finds it when she and Marlowe are searching the industrial park.
• Undercover as Lovers: More like "undercover as bickering, soon-to-be-divorced spouses."
• Underling with an F in PR: After Luella discovers the webpage that will allow them to locate a particular grave in the cemetary:
  Billy: I reckon she's a keeper, Frank, despite what you said.
  Luella: What did he say?
  Billy: "I need a gobby Barbie for a partner like I need a hole in me head."
• Undignified Death: Billy the Brick describes the stages of hypothermia, and says the fact that they're still shivering indicates that they're still in stage one. The later stages involve "paradoxical undressing":
  Billy: Your body gets so cold it thinks it's overheating, starting with the meat and two veg, so the kecks are the first thing to go. Most likely they'll find us naked from the waist down...
  Keeler: Ugh, just when I thought things couldn't get any worse...
• Ungrateful Bastard: After Billy comes to his and Frank's rescue, Keeler still insists on arresting him, pointing out that they wouldn't have been in the fix at all if it wasn't for him.
• Wicked Cultured: Claude Mortimer repeats a few lines from Hamlet's "to be or not to be" soliloquy while locking Frank, Keeler and Billy into a shipping container and reassures them that their deaths will be as easy and painless as falling asleep.
• Your Mother: Subverted. When Keeler rebukes Billy the Brick, Frank angrily informs Keeler that Billy's mother was a heroin junkie who died shortly after giving birth to him. Then he remembers himself and apologizes to Billy, who shrugs it off, saying he has no memory of his mother for Frank to insult.

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