Line of Duty finale: Whodunnit? is the line of questioning
David Brown thinks it's Ted Hastings. Melindy Brown reckons Gill Bigelow. Prof Elizabeth Yardley reckons it could be a group of people.
As the nation waits on tenterhooks to learn the identity of 'H' in the Line of Duty finale on Sunday, the cream of the West Midlands academia have been getting their heads together to come up with the answer.
Probably never since the mystery of who shot JR? has a whodunnit been so hotly anticipated.
While the saga about police corruption has been knocked off the top of the television ratings by Britain's Got Talent, it would take a brave man to bet against it reclaiming that spot when the mystery is finally revealed on Sunday.
The series, written by Cannock-born Jed Mercurio, has so far managed to pull in eight million viewers at its peak, and until last week it was the most watched TV show of 2019.
While the day's of multiple television channels have led to increasingly fragmented viewing habits, the drama about police corruption in an unidentified West Midland city has brought families together.
And questions about the identity of 'H' – an organised crime boss with links to upper echelons of the police force – has been the topic of conversation in offices and factories all over the country.
The mystery has certainly had Prof Yardley working her grey matter overtime.
“As a die-hard crime drama fan who loves a mystery, I’ve mused over this question whilst out running, on the train, in the car, and probably in my sleep as well,” says the director of the centre for applied criminology at Birmingham City University.
“Is ‘H’ a person, a group, a place, an organisation?," she ponders.
"Or something completely different? The show’s writer, Jed Mercurio, is a crime drama genius so this one has got to be one of the toughest riddles to solve.
"My attempts to figure this out have involved – among other things - going right back to basics, to the letter H itself and exploring its significance.
“As a Scrabble nut, I know that H is worth four points. Still no clue. The internet tells me that it’s the eighth most common letter in the English language. That’s probably not helpful either.
"The reason it’s so common is because it’s often paired with other letters like ‘wh’, ‘ch’, ‘gh, ‘sh’. Maybe there’s something in this, maybe ‘H’ isn’t an all-powerful individual, maybe there’s a partner in crime?"
But employing a bit of lateral thinking, she also observes that in the earliest recorded alphabets, letters were often used to symbolise or depict something they represented.
"According to scholars of Proto-Semitic language, the letter H was also the word for fence, given that it resembles part of a fence," she says. "Fence is also the word for someone who buys goods they know to be stolen in order to sell them for profit. "Given Det Chief Supt Hargreaves’ involvement in the raid at Eastfield police storage facility, maybe he was ‘H’ after all?"
But she says another line of thought could be that the letter H is often paired with another letter, such as W, C, G or S.
"Deputy Chief Constable Andrea Wise? Det Chief Supt Patricia Carmichael? DCI Tony Gates? But he’s dead – or is he? Tatleen Sohota or police and crime commissioner Rohan Sindhwani?”
Melindy Brown, a lecturer in criminology at the university, is not convinced.
"After a lot of deliberation, of which I am sure may change as I continue to debate with myself, I am somewhat convinced that ‘H’ is a red herring,” she says.
“Could it be that Kate mistook H for G, leading us all down the wrong path? It is with this idea in mind that I suspect ‘H’ to actually be ‘G’ – for Gill Bigelow. Considering she is not a police officer, would her being the ‘H’ we’re after not add to a greater shock factor for the large body of viewers?"
Melindy suspects Gill has been framing Ted Hastings, and her position as senior legal counsel, provides her with the potential knowledge pool to do so.
"After a series of wrongdoings by Ted, could it be that Gill is seeking her revenge, in one of the most scandalous of ways?”
Former prison governor and emeritus professor of criminology David Wilson, says Mercurio, who was also behind hit crime drama Bodyguard, is a master of throwing the audience off the scent.
"He does this by making it appear as if we know more than we actually do," he says.
"However, that caveat notwithstanding, it would appear to me to lead back to Ted Hastings. If Hastings is not ‘H’, which is perfectly feasible, he has broken so many rules by this stage of the investigation that he could never be allowed to be in charge again.”
Sharp eyed fans will have noticed that Hastings incorrectly spelled 'definitely' with an 'a' in the latest instalment, a mistake which had also been made by 'H' in an earlier episode.
But others have observed that the crime boss uses the messenger name User 2972 – swapping the numbers for their place in the alphabet gives us BiGi – code for Gill Bigelow?
For a while it looked as if corrupt copper Det Chief Supt Les Hargreaves could have been the man, but it now appears he was more of a foot-soldier rather than the brains behind the operation.
Fingers also pointed at slimy Deputy Chief Constable Derek Hilton, but presumably H's continued activity following his death puts him out of the frame?
Of course, Mercurio may surprise everybody, and the mystery crime boss could yet prove to be somebody who no-one would suspect. The seemingly incorruptible members of the force could yet fall under further suspicion.
Either way, he has kept the nation on tenterhooks and put the West Midlands in the spotlight to an extent not seen since the heyday of Crossroads. And for that we can almost forgive him for The Grimleys. Almost.
