‘Once you’ve been touched by evil it never lets go.’ - Kate Ashby
Episode five is the most stylised thus far of this series, as we descend deeper into an unfathomable abyss, with the strong sense that secrets are being withheld. Animation, montage and theatrical set pieces are used to further the narrative and to intensify our understanding of that which is beyond fully understanding: the 1994 genocide and its consequences. Hugo Blick is as much inclined towards artifice rather than naturalism as any of the major BBC dramatists.
First, however, we bid farewell to Blake Gaines. It begins with a bonus dispute, with representatives of the Universal Church of Christ the Peacemaker refusing to pay. Gaines threatens to sue them in scornful, borderline racist terms, before reaching an impasse. As they leave, he doubles up and vomits; the camera pans to an envelope on his desk addressed to Ennis, marked “In the event of my death – love ‘Fischer’” – an allusion to their chess-related duelling last week.
Next we see of Gaines, he is in conversation with his driver, Samson, a seemingly solicitous and tender chap. But after luring him into a situation in his garage where he is trapped in his car, Samson reveals that his real name is not Samson; that “only God is my master”, and he is here to carry out Christ’s parable of the rich fool. He is, it turns out, a member of the congregation of the Universal Church of Christ the Peacemaker, with whom, it seems, one does not mess. Gaines tries to escape as the hiss of fumes builds but, in the end, surrenders peevishly to his doom.
Kate, meanwhile, has been asked to deliver a speech at a school assembly, one her mother had been due to give. It is light on laughs, still lighter on motivation. It is a monologue on evil; the evil her mother had wished to watch her outgrow. “Nothing you can do will ever defeat it,” she says. The students, somewhat stunned, muster a smattering of applause.
Next is an animated sequence; the welcome, graphic-novel element to this drama, in which the backstory of President Bibi Mundanzi is told; how she was discovered as a child under horrific circumstances, adopted and ultimately reclaimed the country from the Hutus with her sister Alice.
Back in the present day, Alice and Michael muse on the sibling rivalry now brewing between the two sisters in Rwanda. He blots his copybook by suggesting that Alice should use rumours surfacing against Bibi, that she is some kind of witch, to campaign against her. Alice takes that as an insult to Rwandans; “Ours is a modern society,” she says. A coolness sets in as Michael asks Alice why she gave Kate the piece of fabric at this particular time. “The moment she hears the truth, everyone else has to hear it too,” she answers, enigmatically. Michael questions the ethics of using a “traumatised 28-year-old girl” as part of a wider strategy. “In my country, we all are traumatised,” replies Alice.
At a clinic on the Swiss/French border, President Mundanzi has multiple wires attached to her head that she has been testing out since the return of seizures she suffered as a child. She is reluctant to wear a device to help rectify her condition; she is afraid it will look like a hearing aid, and a sign of weakness that her opponents will seize upon. Eventually, she settles on a counter-soundbite; she has been “deafened by the guns of liberation”.
A meeting is arranged with her daughter, Mary, who is studying astrophysics. It goes badly. She feels neglected, un-mothered. For all her privilege, she feels life has dealt her a terrible hand: “I have lost years – a father I never knew and a mother who never knew me.” She is angry and Bibi is dismayed. She confesses to David that she feels tired. She has run three times for president, already in defiance of the constitution.
Kate tells Michael she is resigning and intends to go out and assist David, who hopes that Ganimana can be extradited. Michael demurs, suggesting that Rwanda is incapable of staging a fair trial. Trembling with rage and screaming, Kate demands again to know why Michael and his mother were more keen on prosecuting Nyamoya, the man who helped stop the genocide rather than one of its main participants. Why indeed?
Kate meets with David, who tells her that everyone has been lying to her; that Alice and Michael are part of an elite conspiracy to destabilise Rwanda, one of Africa’s most forward-thinking nations. He urges her to help.
Back in London, Kate tracks down one of Eve’s former associates, who says he has the file she is looking for. She is on her way out to see him, in the midst of a proper TV drama downpour and thunderstorm, when she is waylaid instead by Ganimana’s lawyer; his client has asked to see Kate. Perhaps showing that she is not the sort of woman to be man-warned, she does precisely what she has been gravely advised against and agrees. After all, if everyone is lying to her …
Ganimana is being put up in an ostensibly luxurious (others would say hellishly gaudy) house in an embassy street. He says he has paid the price for his actions, plagued with agony and remorse, but Kate reminds him that a million people paid the real price. He tells her solemnly, that he did not kill her mother, or Nyamoya. That was not his hit. Moreover, he warns her, it is others, not him, that she should be afraid of. “God bless you, Kate Ashby,” he says, as she takes her leave, silently assailed by rage but also doubt.
Notes and observations
It is sad and a bit odd to see Blake Gaines disappear so quickly – he looked as if he was being set up for a majorrole in the series. But then, this is a series in which the axes are constantly shifting.
For anyone wondering what the song is that accompanies the Bibi montage, it is Vanishing Act by Lou Reed.
It is said that, unlike her mother, Mary does not see the funny side of her having a boyfriend called Joseph. Perhaps they will laugh about it at some later stage. Or perhaps not.
Ganimana looks at his watch with great significance in his meeting with Kate, claiming to have “saved her” from a grisly fate. Was this meeting a diversionary one? Certainly, a great twist in this series feelings as if it is hovering over the horizon.
