IPlayer to the rescue again - so he did !

As a side issue does anyone know how audience statistics are calculated for watching online? If everyone on this thread has checked back as often as i have and each visit is counted separately then the viewing figures for this series are going to be astronomical .

BIB
Indeed it would lol

How do you watch them before they are shown?

She'd assembled a reasonably convincing photofit before that. Unless she was somehow guided by someone in the Polizei.

On another tack. Eve readily agrees with Jorn that Alice is dead and Herz is in prison because of it. If true, she has only humoured Gemma's search for Alice though was keeping open her options on the third girl being linked to Herz.

I thought Jorn was surprised to see Adam at the house

I was thinking about 'Alice' placing flowers on Henry Reed's grave. It's been speculated that he may have shown the girls kindness in the past or helped Alice escape which suggests he has a role in 'girls' part of the story.

Is it possible he's not directly involved, but she takes the flowers out of a sense of regret or guilt because he was murdered by Gettrick and she feels responsible?...

I'm increasingly thinking that Gettrick was a lone wolf regarding the abductions and Stone and Henry were being held to ransom because of what happened in Iraq (Gettrick might or might not have been the third man in that episode). If they were pressured into helping Gettrick when 'Alice' had appendicitis and had to be released, perhaps Henry refused and threatened to expose Gettrick. He would go down too (because of Iraq), but maybe he just couldn't live with the guilt and the lies any more and thought saving or helping the girl(s) would provide some degree of redemption. Henry gets killed, while Stone agrees to cover and they frame Herz (possibly chosen because Nadia has her own or related skeletons and won't make too much fuss). In 2016 Stone's mind is becoming less reliable and Gettrick decides he needs to disappear, hence his 'retirement' plans.

My other thought about the flowers is a bit too daft, but it crossed my mind that Henry's coffin could contain a second body. A baby perhaps?...

....but then, why not just bury a body in the woods?
....Too many bodies? .

Nah. Ridiculous theory!

Good point! Do we know who helped her do the photo fit? Gettrick perhaps?

Jorn is a version of George

sorry , which one is Adam ?

Looking at the beginning of episode 1 again, the camper looks to have a Hanover number plate (although it's not as clear on my iPad as it would be on the telly). Plates can be faked, of course, but would there be lots of old yellow campers registered in Hanover in 2003? They might not have known it had a Hanover plate, but you'd think it was an obvious place to start looking. I guess we have to assume they followed that lead up and drew a blank. Or did 'Alice' deliberately not tell them about the van?


ETA: She did mention 'the van'

The thing that is puzzling me is the conversation that Eve had with Baptiste outside the nursing home.

When Baptiste said that he had been in Iraq searching for Daniel she said something along the lines of "Why? It's over. Kristian Herz is rotting in prison".

She knows that there are still stones unturned so why say "It's over"?

Good observations. The van bugs me so much. And what on earth was it doing in Paris in 2002? We know the sighting of it there seems genuine as there's a photo of it parked in a Paris street in Baptiste's newspaper cuttings.

If this is all the work of Gettrick I can't think why he'd choose Paris as a location for his first abduction. Such a long way from Eckhausen, a risk of being stopped by the police on the long journey home, a risk of the van breaking down, etc.

Not yet. In the hospital when we hear her making her statement the people present are Jorn, Eve, the Webster family a couple of unidentified Polizei, an unnamed red cap and some nurses. No Gettrick . "And he spoke in English" "Yes", "Did he have an accent?". She turns her head and changes expression, "Yes. He was German". They ask if she got a look at his face, can she describe him? but she stares back in front and continues where she left off before describing what he did to her.

Later in the episode we're in the Police station in a room full of army and Polizei. Gettrick and Stone are there. Police Chief Engel is showing everyone the photofit and saying it will be distributed to police stations and newspapers. It's on police paperwork, so I think she gave the description to the German police, but there could have been army people there??

This is when Stone and Engel butt heads and Engel is saying this isn't your remit. To Gettrick he says, "your department is local politics; community relations - not abductions!" so I doubt he would have been allowed to be present during the photofit bit.

Alice must have been coached prior to being released, I think

Following on from my previous post, there has to be a connection between Gettrick and Paris. He can't have just have randomly chosen to have a holiday there and then abducted Sophie as a crime of opportunism. This is a shot in the dark, but is Gettrick the brother of Mrs Giroux, making him Sophie's uncle? Or was Gettrick a friend or work associate of Remy Giroux? Statistically children are far more likely to be abducted by someone known to them than by a stranger, and family ties/loyalties are a strong theme the writers like to play with.

And Gettrick's abduction of Lena, "a friend of the family", suggests a modus operandi of targeting children who already know him. Strongly likely that Alice would have known him too, with the closely knit army community in Eckhausen.

The question remains though as to how much coaching the girl who returned could have received and how receptive she could have been to it once she contracted appendicitis.

NHS suggests it typically goes from noticeable to constant and severe pain within a period of hours and can be fatal in less than 24 once it ruptures.

But he has her daughter so...

Watching episode 2 again for a refresh. At first I thought the butcher was set up.. What if the butcher was not set up? He really was the abductor? I wonder if Andreas is involved? He looks incredibly creepy, and so far a very low profile.. Something odd about Andreas. At first I thought he was a boy, but he's a man. A lot older than I first thought. Maybe Alice/Sophie says sorry to the butcher because she has feelings for him, father figure? It may be one big paedo ring.. I wonder if the butcher was the third person? How did he meet Nadia? Nadia might also be involved as well, in the ring. Nadia was attacked to silence her I believe. Daniel Reed said he found out stuff about his father Henry that make him physically sick.. This was in present day before he died. When Daniel's dad died, he didn't believe it was suicide. At that point he loved and respected his dad. He searched for the truth, but whatever he found out made him hate his dad? What did he find out that disgusted him so much? Is Sam involved? Was Lena the girl in the brothel?

I did think Gerrick and Sophies dad looked alike..

I know. It's hard to reconcile. And she had to walk miles out of the forest in bare feet in the December snow. One bit of the jigsaw starts to add up and another bit crumbles. Is it possible that the butcher was already known to her somehow (by sight, maybe) and they picked on him for no other reason than it was someone she could describe?

Yes, Andreas is a strange character. I don't think he's capable of masterminding anything as he appears to have learning difficulties - Kristian had to help him out with a simple task of putting jars on the shelf correctly.

But I wonder if he's the rejected son of another character, Sam maybe? Or even Stone? Cruelly rejected because he has Down's Syndrome. And Nadia, for some reason connected with the web of loyalties/guilt/blackmail, has taken Andreas under her wing?

Thank you for that. I lost track of when Gettrick was present and when he wasn't. They did a good job of keeping him in the background early on.

She's also got an identical tattoo to Alice. So either planned well in advance or some sort of branding.

I mustn't have been paying attention properly, because I am completely lost.

No idea what's going on.

Why is the French man in the middle East?

What has the army girl got to do with anything?

Is this girl Alice or not?

Does he have down syndrome? I watched episode 2 where you his face clear. He behaved odd, but didn't look like he had DS? Sometimes its the smaller characters you don't expect to be more involved.. He could have been one of the mask men? Anything is possible.. Tinking the butcher is guilty now.. The way Nadia spoke to Daniel Reed was pretty frightening, who could been one of the mask attackers? My head is hurting

I've had to watch each episode at least twice. It's much easier the second time around as you know who everybody is and, can pay more attention to which time zone they are in.

I still have to flip through episodes on my iPad to refresh my memory on certain events.