Protection ending explained: was DS Paul Brandice corrupt?

This Protection ending explained feature contains spoilers... It’s been a nailbiting ride of twists and turns for DI Liz Nyles (Siobhan Finneran) and she still has no idea who she can really trust as we arrive at this tense finale!

However, we’re hoping she finds out who the good and bad cops are, who’s been leaking information about her witness protection unit and how high up the chain the conspiracy goes.

The six-part series started with the murder of Jimmy McLennan and his wife, shortly after DS Paul Brandice — a new member of the Protected Persons team — arrived at their front door.

Was Brandice (Barry Ward) there to try and save them or was he there to help with the killing? We don’t know, but we do know he’d been having an affair with DI Liz Nyles in the weeks running up to their murder and had visited Jimmy McLennan before, where they discussed "insurance".

Brandice wasn’t authorised to know where the McLennans were staying and Liz began to suspect he’d used her to find out where they were. But was he working for drug boss Eddie Crowther (Alec Newman) or someone else?

McLennan’s 12-year-old daughter Amy (Tilly Kaye) survived the attack and went to stay with Liz, yet when DCI Wheatley (Katherine Kelly), who’s investigating her parents’ murder arranged an interview, hired hitman Jock Ferguson tried to kill her once again.

DCI Wheatley and Liz suspected each other of leaking information about Amy, but in the meantime someone tried to frame Liz’s colleague Raj Koli (Chaneil Kular) by hacking his computer. Meanwhile DCI Amanda Kelman (Nadine Marshall) — a cop with a reputation for finding bent cops - was overseeing the whole affair.

After being shot at the McLennan's house, DS Brandice was recovering in hospital, until he was murdered by a mysterious nurse, just hours after he had a conversation with Kelman about "doing his duty". The CCTV from the hospital was also changed to remove Brandice’s killer.

Liz had found a third phone in Brandice’s car and not shared it with Wheatley because she didn’t trust her and on that phone Liz found a contact called "John Gibson", who claimed to be one of Brandice’s pals from the army. More on him later.

That phone was later stolen from Liz’s house and planted at Crowther’s house, for the police to find alongside the gun used in the McLennan murders. The phone was enough to get Liz chucked off the case and facing criminal charges, while the gun was enough to put Crowther in jail. But who planted them?

Liz is convinced DCI Amanda Kelman is the leak and believes she’s connected to Brandice and Gibson, but how and why? Is Kelman working with organized crime, or is there more at play?

When Liz visits Brandice’s widow, she discovers John Gibson is actually Nigel Frankton, who works for the intelligence services. Had he been working with Crowther? Was it him who set up the drug lord?

Liz suspects McLennan had evidence that Frankton was working with Crowther — ie. his "insurance" — and was persuaded to give it to Brandice, but what was that insurance policy?

Realizing all this, Liz visited Crowther in prison and offered to try and help him if he revealed the truth behind the conspiracy. However that night he was murdered in his cell before he could call Liz to spill the beans...

Is that everything? Let’s face it, we’ve probably missed something, but here’s how the finale went down anyway…

What was Jimmy McLennan's insurance policy?

Liz and Raj break into DS Brandice’s house to try and find the "insurance policy" the late detective got from McLennan. She thinks it’s something that incriminates Frankton, hence his determination to keep it under wraps.

She also finds a copy of a photo her sister took at his house. When she gets home she takes the original off the wall and finds a USB stick taped to the back of it.

She takes it to Soran Ahmadi (Waj Ali), who helped run Crowther’s drug operation in Turkey, who sends her to see someone who served with the Kurdish independence movement.

This man's group sold heroin to Crowther to buy weapons for their cause, however, leaders of the group cut a new deal and started to get better weapons. In return, they started running missions in Iraq and other areas that had nothing to do with their cause.

So the USB is McLennan’s insurance policy and contains evidence that British intelligence services were working with organized crime and using Kurdish separatists to carry out nefarious foreign policy missions. It seems Brandice left the USB for Liz to find.

What happens to Liz?

After discovering the truth about the "insurance policy", Liz calls Raj to come and collect her, but when he does, a sinister goon armed with a gun hustles her into the back of the car.

He drives them to the woods and demands the USB. Liz refuses and Raj tries to save her, but the henchman shoots him, while Liz flees into the woods, before flagging down a lorry driver and escaping.

Yet later on Liz gets a call from Frankton, who tells her he’ll kill her father and daughter unless they come to "an arrangement".

Who ordered the death of the McLennans?

When Liz meets Frankton at the McLennans' safe house, he confesses to using Crowther’s drug operation to disguise British foreign policy missions in the Middle East. He then explains that when McLennan turned on Crowther, he knew their ‘arrangement’ was over. He got his old army friend, DS Brandice, to find out where McLennan was, but once the detective realised Frankton was going to kill the McLennans, he tried to save them.

Nevertheless, Frankton wants the USB stick — which implicates him in the conspiracy — and is prepared to kill Liz to get it. He also explains how his gun belongs to the Crowther organization and when he kills her, the police will believe she worked for the organised crime group and took her own life.

Luckily armed police and DCI Wheatley arrive just in time to save Liz, but later on Wheatley explains how the ACC came down to retrieve Frankton just as she was about to charge him. “I’m not sure what happened after that,” she says. We know the ACC is on good terms with the Home Secretary, so we have a good guess on that front.

Who was DCI Amanda Kelman working for?

In the aftermath of the revelations about Frankton, DCI Amanda Kelman admits she leaked the location of Amy’s interview. “I’m just a liaison," she says. “When a police investigation has a national security dimension, I step in to facilitate communication between the agencies.”

She says she wasn’t leaking, but ‘passing on information’ at the behest of a senior intelligence officer (which sounds a bit like leaking). However she claims the death of DS Brandice was all Frankton’s work and not hers.

DCI Kelman goes on to say she suspects Frankton contacted DS Brandice to gain access to the McLennans, but the detective would probably have assumed he was taking part in an officially sanctioned intelligence operation “just as she did”. As such, he wasn’t corrupt.

She also says Frankton operated well beyond his remit and will be dealt with, while Crowther will be blamed. “You’re being asked to hide a bad man’s crimes to preserve the greater good,” she says.

Did DS Paul Brandice really love Liz?

When Liz searched Paul’s house at the start of the episode, she found divorce papers, which would suggest he was no longer in love with his wife. But did he have genuine feelings for Liz?

Well much later on, at Paul’s funeral, DI Rick Bewley (Andrew Knott) explains how DCI Wheatley put together a timeline of the detective’s movements, assuming he slept with Liz to find out the location of the safe house. However it seems he had all the information he needed to complete the task Frankton had given him, before he began the affair with Liz, so his feelings were probably genuine.

That’s at least something for Liz to hold on to and a brief memory of genuine happiness for her to cherish…