Penny for Your Thoughts

River wakes in a locked room after being rescued and knocked unconscious. His captor, Victor, brings him to meet Natasha, the mother of the man David killed. She knows him as Bertrand, not Adam Lockhead. River’s resemblance to her son explains the interest in his arrival, but his account of the bathroom shooting supplies an answer she cannot obtain from Bertrand himself. Instead of leaving once the immediate danger has passed, River asks about the photograph he found at Les Arbres. He has a link to the bombing and needs to understand it.

Natasha describes Frank Harkness and the children he raised at the house. Bertrand and the Westacres bomber belong to that family; Winters was an identity used by Yves. Frank had children with different women, kept the sons and removed their mothers from their lives. The account turns the threatening promise about brothers into something literal. Before River can absorb everything, local men who mistake him for Bertrand gather outside. Anger at Bertrand’s behaviour falls on the wrong person. River escapes the building and gets away on an awkwardly slow moped.

In London, David remains desperate to speak to First Desk. Catherine tries to keep him calm by responding to the world as he understands it, rather than repeatedly demanding that he recognise the present. Flyte arrives at Slough House knowing that the blood results contradict Lamb’s identification. She arrests him for obstruction, but Lamb offers David’s whereabouts to avoid being taken to the Park. He has already arranged for Louisa to help move David. Catherine gets there first, shifting him into a neighbour’s home before Flyte can find him.

The concealment does not last. David leaves through the back door, and Catherine and Louisa discover he has disappeared. At the Park, Whelan recruits Giti to search for further cold-body identities outside Taverner’s control. Molly Doran makes clear that his formal seniority has not won her loyalty. At the office, Flyte’s handling of Roddy provokes an unexpected response from Coe, whose reaction to restraint exposes a frightening edge beneath his usual silence. The new arrivals are proving difficult to read for reasons more serious than ordinary office eccentricity.

Moira’s research identifies Sam Chapman as the man who travelled to France on David’s behalf. Lamb arranges to meet him, but Chapman recognises that he is being followed. Marcus, having sold his gun to fund another bet, and Shirley are sent to help. Their surveillance fails to remain discreet and the pursuit becomes a fight they cannot control. The attacker throws Marcus through a shop window and later overpowers the three opponents trying to stop him. Lamb intervenes with a taxi, driving into the fight and hitting the assailant. He saves the men and women on the ground, but the attacker escapes before he can be questioned.