Diksha Sundriyal
‘Criminal: UK’ closes its Season 2 with a gripping fourth episode that features Kunal Nayyar in a whole new light. The episode works as a gritty true-crime drama with a couple of unsolved cases on the line and a volatile, psychopathic killer on the other end of the interrogation. The police officers engage in a cat and mouse game with the highly manipulative criminal and come off on the other end with some startling revelations. Here’s what the ending means.
Criminal UK Season 2 Episode 4 Recap
Convicted criminal Sandeep Singh is brought in for questioning regarding the disappearance of a woman named Annabelle Ashcombe. Sandeep is serving his fourteen-year sentence for the murder of a woman named Samantha West. A couple of months before West was killed, Ashcombe had gone missing, and for eleven years, no one had any clue as to where she might have gone. It would have remained a cold case had her mother not stumbled upon a disposable camera Ashcombe had brought home from a wedding she had attended just a week before her disappearance. In one of the pictures from the camera, Sandeep is spotted in the background. The cops want him to confess for Ashcombe’s murder, but Sandeep has an alibi for that. In turn, he offers them information on another high-profile cold case, but it comes with a price.
What’s the case?
This episode of ‘Criminal: UK’ focuses on three murders. The first is that of Samantha West, a rich woman who had offered to invest in Sandeep’s business. When she retracted on their deal, he got angry and killed her. He was caught for the crime and received fourteen-year imprisonment of which he has already served ten. The other case is the mysterious disappearance of Annabelle Ashcombe, a case that has remained unsolved for eleven years. While these two are connected to Sandeep, he brings a completely unrelated case to light. Around the time of Ashcombe’s disappearance, a young boy named Alfie Ince had gone missing too. For all these years, no evidence was found, no trail to locate the boy, dead or alive. Sandeep claims that when he first went to prison, he met a man who confessed to kidnapping and killing Alfie. He will only share this information if four years from his sentence are reduced for co-operation. Because he has already served ten, it would mean immediate freedom for him.
The Ending: Who’s the culprit?
When Sandeep offers an alibi for Annabelle’s murder, the case seems closed. Just because he killed one woman doesn’t mean he killed another. He furiously states that he won’t be held accountable for all the cold cases that the cops want to be resolved just because he was caught for one. This not only serves as the irony for what’s about to happen but also becomes a foreshadowing of what’s to be revealed. By the end of the interrogation, it turns out that Sandeep had been responsible for all the murders in question.
Here’s what happened. In 2009, Sandeep had attended a wedding where he met Annabelle Ashcombe. He had been looking for investors and she promised to invest half-a-million in it. Had they not agreed upon it, Sandeep would have attended a month-long cruise that serves as a hotspot for potential investors. After the conversation with Annabelle, he found it unnecessary to go on the cruise. However, a few days later, she came by his house to tell him that she had changed her mind. This angered Sandeep and he ended up killing her in his garden. Just as it happened, Alfie, who had been staying with his grandmother for the summer, arrived on the scene. Sandeep told him that Annabelle was sick and in the pretense of asking for the boy’s help, he killed him too. He buried both their bodies in his garden and moved on with his life. To secure an alibi for the murder, he flew to Florida where the cruise was supposed to make a stop and arrived just in time to get a picture with the crew. For all intents and purposes, he had not been in the country when Annabelle disappeared.
Months later, Sandeep met Samantha, who promised to invest in his business, but backed out at the last moment. He killed her, but could not get away with it this time. He received fourteen years in prison, and ten years later, he was called to the station for a murder investigation. When he realized that he was to be pinned for the murder of Annabelle, he decided to use the situation to his advantage. He knew he had an alibi for Annabelle so the cops wouldn’t be able to get him for that. But that wasn’t it. He had another murder for which he could not only shift the blame on someone else but also use it as a way to get the rest of his sentence canceled. He came up with the story of another inmate confessing to the murder of Alfie Ince. This inmate had been involved in smuggling, among other things, so Sandeep made up the story of smuggling alcohol and children to Bulgaria. He said that Alfie was killed on the way and his body was disposed of in some obscure area, which would keep enough ambiguity over the case to not bring it back to Sandeep.
He had almost sold the whole thing to his interrogators, but then Hugo Duffy came into the picture. He had been the investigating officer in the case of Alfie Ince and had expressed his doubts over Sandeep back when the case was active but had to let it go because his superiors were not keen on following that thread of the investigation. He calls out Sandeep’s bluff, wondering how he could possibly remember the address of the fellow inmate. He turns it around on Sandeep, saying that a team has been sent to his house where they are going to search for Alfie’s body, and once they find it, Sandeep will have more years added to his sentence. If he cooperates, something can be done about it, and that’s what gets the convict talking. To their surprise, he confesses to committing both murders and the cases are closed.
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