This post contains spoilers for Payback episode 3.
Lexie Noble makes a decision to help the police in their pursuit of Cal Morris, yet her plan goes up in smoke when her mother arrives on the scene and drops an enormous bombshell from her past. After playing both sides, has she finally been forced to pick a lane and has she chosen the correct one?
Here's our recap of what happened in Payback episode 3...
After doorstepping her in a dark car park, DCI Adam Guthrie shows Lexie an image of her taking Cal Morris’ cash, but she’s in no mood to answer his questions. However when he spells out everything he knows about her late husband’s connection to the crime lord and that they suspect he was guilty of money-laundering, she seems very unsettled.
DCI Guthrie then starts hinting that Lexie might be guilty of the same crime and brings up DI Jean Royce, who’s convinced she had her own husband killed.
It’s certainly not a pretty picture for Lexie, but DCI Guthrie promises to help her with all of it, if she helps him with his bid to prosecute Morris. But what will Lexie do?
'I think that woman is lying to us...'
Meanwhile DI Jean Royce is determined to find out who killed Jared Noble, but attempts to find his mysterious mistress ‘Sarah Blaine’ are coming up short. We wonder why that is..
Yet DI Royce still thinks Lexie is guilty and decides to go against her orders from DCI Guthrie and bring her in again for questioning, in a conversation that’s overheard by DI Khan.
With her solicitor Rufus by her side (we think there’s something dodgy about this guy) they begin to grill her and are very interested by Lexie’s indifference to the news Jared was having an affair. For a second it seems like DI Royce might have caught Lexie out when she suggests she already knows who she is, but Lexie rallies and says her husband would never have cheated on her.
DI Royce then starts to ask about her relationship with Cal Morris, to the irritation of the watching DCI Guthrie. After the interview, Lexie discusses Jared’s death with Rufus and his wife, who then confess that one of their pals saw Jared with a woman in Edinburgh a couple of months ago. Could Jared have actually been having an affair?
Later on, DCI Guthrie tells DI Royce more about Lexie’s connection to Morris and gets the police chief to warn her off any further digging where his new informant is concerned. But DI Royce doesn’t seem like someone who’ll let such things go.
'Jared told me it was a new piece of software...'
Elsewhere, Morris is furious when the owner of the island he’s desperate to buy says he’s no longer bound by the agreement he struck to sell the land, because the funds weren’t transferred.
It seems the delay has given the Island Community Group time to put together their own offer. Not bad for a group of “geriatric crofters” as Morris so eloquently puts it. Malkie seems confident the lawyers can talk the landowner round though. DI Khan and DCI Guthrie will certainly hope they can, because if Morris doesn’t make this purchase then they’ll have nothing on him.
In the next room, Lexie is still trying to trace the lost £28m when Morris shows her the fake account portal Jared set up to help hide his theft. It’s a very swish piece of work and Lexie thinks it’s beyond anything her late husband could have managed alone.
Aaron wants to show it to one of his friends who can help decrypt it, yet Morris is reluctant to let his son’s “druggie hacker pals” into his accounts. We can’t say we blame him. He thinks it’s more likely that Jared got another agency he works with might have done it and orders Lexie to dig out their details. However when Aaron gives her phone back she sees she has a message from DCI Guthrie asking for a meeting that evening.
Once inside her accounting firm, Lexie asks questions about the agency that designed their websites, yet seems far more interested in any lunches Jared had in the Grass Market in the months before he died.
'If I do this I'm taking a massive risk...'
DI Khan is keen to accompany DCI Guthrie when he meets Lexie, but he’s having none of it and instead tells him to see if he can find a way of pulling apart the rival bid for the island. DI Khan doesn’t like his boss much and neither do we. (Derek Riddell always seems to play these desperately untrustworthy characters..)
At the meeting DCI Guthrie pressures Lexie for info that could help link Morris to the island purchase and wants copies of paperwork from inside the crime lord’s office. He says if she cooperates with the police he “guarantees” she'll be in a stronger situation and even offers a shorter sentence on those prospective money-laundering charges — or even immunity.
Lexie pushes for more and demands witness protection, which DCI Guthrie agrees upon. We don’t think he has the power to sanction such stuff off the cuff, but nevertheless, Lexie agrees and makes a deal. Now she’s stuck between a cock and a hard case.
Luckily for her, when she’s dropped off back at the office by Aaron no one’s about so she helps herself to the records in Morris’ office and starts snapping away. When she’s interrupted by the crime boss, she quickly changes the subject by revealing she has some info that might help him buy the island. It’s a technicality that makes the committee ineligible for a grant, but Morris is impressed. Surely her sneaking around hasn’t gone unnoticed though!
'I’m sorry, you’re on your own...'
At the police station, someone breaks the news to DI Jean Royce that Lexie has a police record for having her boyfriend beating up her dad when she was 15. This changes the picture for Royce!
Before you can say “PLOT TWIST” her mum Sandra is speaking to the police and she paints a picture of a young girl who fell in with the wrong boy and started drinking, smoking and “god knows what else”. She says her husband tried to stop her from seeing him anymore and Lexie had her father beaten up — but is there more to the story?
Later on that evening, Lexie’s mum doorsteps her after tricking a police officer into revealing where she lives, but she’s in no mood to entertain her estranged mother. To be honest, we think it’s a bit rich of her mum to go to the police station and drop her daughter right in the s**t and then expect a big welcome afterwards.
At least we get to hear Lexie’s side of this story and she claims the attack on her father wasn’t her fault and is still angry that her parents allowed her to be put in a secure unit. She then tells her mum to leave. Bye Sandra!
Back at Police HQ, DCI Guthrie is told that due to this explosive new evidence, he needs to pull the plug on his little operation, not least because any info he gains from Lexie will likely be inadmissible in court.
This now means that DCI Guthrie can’t offer Lexie witness protection and that she’s “on her own”. This is obviously bad news for Lexie as she’s convinced the crime boss to push ahead with his purchase of the island, an act that will likely see him prosecuted by the police. She’s rightly worried that he’ll put two and two together and turn his significant wrath against her.
It seems Morris has some people inside the force himself *MERCURIO BENT COPPER KLAXON* and he soon knows about her little misdemeanour, which puts her up a few notches in his book.
But Lexie has no time to think about that and she’s soon off to see Aaron Morris’ tech guy Gaz, who offers some critical appraisals of the portal’s presentation but can’t track the IP address because it’s been disguised through proxy servers. Those pesky proxy servers.
'Get yourself on a ferry Malkie boy...'
After being left high and dry by DCI Guthrie, Lexie realises her only hope of avoiding Morris’ wrath is to help him avoid being convicted and so she suggests he invest in the community purchase of the Isle of Eris.
This would disguise ownership and shield him from DCI Guthrie’s investigation, meaning she’s finally chosen a side in this tug of war between the police and Morris. Having said that, Guthrie didn’t give her much of a choice...
The financing would purportedly come from a Dutch Investment Firm - who would almost certainly know ‘their’ from ‘there’ - but it’s up to Malkie to sell the proposal to the island committee.
Back at Police Scotland HQ, DCI Guthrie breaks the news of how he’s shafted Lexie to DI Khan, who’s pretty uncomfortable about the whole thing, not least because he believes Lexie innocent of the crime for which she was convicted.
As the 9.30 deadline comes and goes, the news comes through about the Community Group's purchase of the island following the withdrawal of Morris' offer. It doesn’t take DCI Guthrie long to work out what happened and threatens revenge, which is a bit rich considering how he screwed her over...
