Four: Breakthrough
Ronnie waits in his house for McCroon to come to try to kill him. He comes right into the house and points his shotgun at Ronnie, but Ronnie is more concerned with solving the mystery of Emma's murder than with his own safety so, instead of being scared, Ronnie gets angry and challenges McCroon to explain himself. When that doesn't get McCroon to open up (er, with the explanations, I mean, not with the gun) he tries saying
"Please, I want to know."
Then McCroon gets shot by a policemanny sent by Ross.
Ross, meanwhile, meets Pendleton when the police find the body of one of the Gaia team that was drowned at Northmoor. Pendleton uses a geiger counter to discover the body is radioactive, like Emma's hair was. This scares all the policemannys but Pendleton remains calm - an effective way of conveying both the seriousness of the radiation as well as Pendleton's character.
Being radioactive is a little bit more subtle than being bright green and ded, but this makes the Gaia team the equivalent of the miner characters from The Green Death, while Pendleton must be the Brigadier - he even has the moustache, which is a bit of a giveaway now that I think about it, mew.
So far Emma's ghost has been the only paranormal element to this story, and that could still - if you were so inclined - be dismissed as being all in Ronnie's mind. But when he returns home again he sees that a water spring has, er, sprung up in the place where Emma died. Which, in case you were wondering, is not the sort of thing you would expect to see happen in a normal thriller.
Ronnie hears young Emma's ghost singing
"All I want is ratatouille,Ratatouille, ratatouille.All I want is ratatouille,Rat-a-touille."
which is an annoyingly catchy jingle, bordering on the (rata)twee, but it leads him to a recipe book where Emma hid a clue for him - a page with a list of street and road names on it.
"I've been trying to tell you about this for ages,"
says Emma.
"Don't lose it - it's important."
Jedburgh is watching Come Dancing, his "favorite TV program" (although I have to assume he means his favourite TV programme that was on in 1985, seeing as Blakes 7 ended in 1981), when Ronnie arrives at the CIA house to ask him about Gaia. Jedburgh helped found it in 1977 at the order of his president, but the president then changed his mind and Jedburgh was ordered to "dismantle" it - but by then it was already too late for him to stop.
Ronnie tells Jedburgh he is thinking of going in to Northmoor, and Jedburgh offers to go with him, but only if Ronnie can get a "proper" map for them.
"That's what I hoped you'd say."
says Ronnie, by which he means
Mac puts Ronnie in touch with a pair of mannys to help him get access to the MI5 computer. This is a very unusual form of computer hacking, unlike any hacking I've ever seen portrayed elsewhere in films or TV. They go to a new building where the computers have only recently been installed and connected to MI5's network, and use one of those.
Pendleton and Harcourt are almost immediately aware of what is happening. Pendleton tries to delay MI5 from sending the police after Ronnie, but they don't go along with him. Police cars arrive with flashing lights and a bunch of policemannys rush in. The mannys helping Ronnie run away but he keeps his cool - like when he faced McCroon earlier, his safety is only of secondary concern to Ronnie when he is this close to the truth.
Ronnie gets the map of Northmoor from the file after searching for the street names from Emma's list, and then he prints it out on an old fashioned dot matrix printer - the closest to The Matrix this computer hacking ever gets, lol.
Finally Ronnie runs away with the police very close behind him, making for a tense and exciting chase sequence. Ronnie eventually loses the police in a crowd at the Barbican Theatre, where he meets up with Clemmy.
"Good evening, Mr Craven, what a pleasant surprise."
Clemmy may claim this, but the suspicion has to be that she was waiting there for him, so she meant the "surprise" was only on his side. They go into the theatre to hide and watch a play.
Ronnie: "What's it about?"Clemmy: "Incest."
I have seen it claimed that this line is actually a meta-reference to Edge of Darkness itself, hinting at a subtext of incest between Ronnie and Emma. Which just goes to show that you can read anything into anything should you so choose, mew. Ronnie and Clemmy end up going back to his room together, where they have kiffs.
The next day Pendleton summons Ronnie back to the Houses of Parliament to give evidence to the committee. There he meets Godbolt, who admits that he W-worded for Bennett at Northmoor. He goes further, and tells Ronnie that when Emma was murdered it was Ronnie that McCroon was really after, sent by IIF, because they thought that Ronnie had been the one who showed the Gaia team the way into Northmoor.
Ronnie: "They got it wrong!"Godbolt: "Like they always do. It were me."
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