S32 E3: A Dream State | Sea of Lies

Okay, listen, fall is my favorite season, and the biggest reason for that is it means TIFF is year.

My name is Elameen Abdul Mahmoud, and I host a show called Commotion.

Normally, we get into the biggest pop culture stories, and we do that in about 25 minutes or so, but during TIFF, we do it in half the time.

Listen to TIFF and 12 in our podcast feed every weekday during the Toronto International Film Festival so you can keep up to date without having to watch four movies in a day.

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This is is a CBC podcast.

The following episode contains difficult subject matter, including references to suicide.

Please take care.

When David Davis gifted Ron and Elaine one-way tickets to Canada for Christmas, suddenly this plan to move, which for Elaine had only ever existed in the abstract, was now as tactile as a brick.

As they closed the door to the aircraft and England with it, Elaine knew there was no turning back now.

Beside her, Ron grinned the grin he'd been grinning since the moment that he learned he was going home to Canada.

He was returning home to the only place he ever felt comfortable and loved and safe, his happy place.

But for Elaine, this moment felt a lot more fraught.

She was leaving everything she'd ever known, and she she was doing it for him.

She talked herself into it.

But maybe she'd love it.

Was she going to be one of those people who lived their whole lives in the same town?

Or someone who says yes to adventure and yes to love?

It wouldn't be a huge culture shock.

It'd just be Canada.

They have the queen on all their stuff too.

And sure, it's the year 1993, and it's not like you can ask Google, is Calgary a place that I should go to live?

All that mattered was that they had each other.

They had their love, and together they could do anything.

But what Elaine didn't know was that there was a problem with their plan.

A bullet through their foot.

And it seemed so obvious in retrospect.

Their problem could have been solved through one conversation with one Canadian.

Sorry, you guys are going where, when?

Calgary in February.

Don't do that.

Going in February, it was something like minus 30, 35.

And it was absolutely freezing.

As they touched down in Calgary, it was a new beginning.

The beginning of the end.

Yeah, well, the move to Canada was difficult, to be honest.

Calgary was going through a recession at that time, which we weren't really aware of.

I have to say, some of the areas we looked at looked a bit rough.

And Ron wasn't very comfortable.

He said, I don't like this area.

I don't like this.

So he wasn't really very happy.

We had enough money to buy a second-hand car because we thought, well, we're going to need a car.

And he did his driving test and he failed it.

So we were walking everywhere, which was crazy.

Yeah, that was hard.

And then I managed to get myself a job doing cash-in-hand as an au pair.

That was long hours.

I would go to work 7 a.m.

in the morning till 6 p.m.

at night.

It just seemed like a drudgery and a struggle.

Despite all of the hope hope and excitement that they'd shared in the lead-up, Ron seemed to get caught in the same ruts he always did.

He was a bright man and a gentleman and a fine worker, but the bare minimum of social skills required to head out, apply for a job, and have an interview go well, he just didn't have that in him.

This is the difficult bit talking about my time in Canada because Ron got quite depressed and he got quite morose.

and it did affect our relationship.

After years of hyping to Elaine how much happier he was going to be when they left England, now that they were here, it was clear that Canada was only working to exacerbate Ron's depression further.

And as it turned to spring, everything remained untenable.

I just thought, I can't cope with this anymore, I can't do it.

It was never gonna work.

Elaine didn't have the resources to look after herself, let alone take care of Ron.

After only six months, it all became too much to carry.

I just I didn't have the struggle.

The only thing that kept her going was a moment of respite written on the calendar.

Her sister was getting married in Norfolk, England that summer.

Elaine had her ticket booked.

And as the date approached, she wondered what was she going to do?

When it was time to head to the wedding, Ron took Elaine to the airport, completely impervious to what was happening.

Leaving Ron in Canada was really, really difficult because we both went to the airport together and we said our goodbyes.

But he didn't know that I wasn't coming back.

And that's why I feel really bad, because he had no idea.

It was difficult.

Elaine had made her decision.

She knew this was it.

I actually looked at him and I thought, I don't think I'm ever going to see you again.

That's what I thought.

That's what just the thought that passed through my mind.

I thought, I'm not going to see you again.

I didn't know what was going to happen.

I didn't know what the future had.

And I just didn't want to break his heart by saying, I'm not coming back.

There was no salvaging it here.

There's no salvaging it there.

They had tried.

They tried.

Elaine hugged Ron for the last time.

And they never saw each other again.

I'm Sam Mullins.

And this is Sea of Lies from CBC's Uncover.

Episode 3: A Dream State.

Elaine arrived back in the UK, not exactly in the right headspace to be attending a wedding.

I was not in a very good state at all.

I'd lost an awful lot of weight and I was a bit like a zombie to be honest.

But luckily she wouldn't be going to her sister's wedding alone.

Mr.

Davis knew that I was coming back and he agreed he would meet me because he was actually coming with me and taking my mum down to my sister's wedding in Norfolk.

Davis and his teenage daughter Noel were invited too and had kindly offered to drive.

But then when Davis arrived on the day, Noel was conspicuously absent.

I thought thought we were all going, including Noel, but Noel was otherwise engaged when we got back.

He said she was up in Scotland

doing a course in Scotland, so she wouldn't be coming to the wedding.

Upon laying his eyes on her, Davis could see right away that Elaine was in bad shape.

She was trying to rally for the sake of her sister's big day, but was falling short.

Among the guests, Elaine wasn't the only one one who seemed off.

Davis too seemed uncharacteristically tense and agitated.

Elaine remembers him being annoyed that the photographers kept taking shots with him in the frame.

His foul mood filled Elaine with dread because she knew that she had to tell him she wasn't going back to Calgary.

She hadn't the courage to tell Ron that she was leaving him.

And now she was afraid to tell Davis.

After all, it was his generosity that had paid for her and Ron's tickets to make the move in the first place.

So she steeled herself and came out with it.

And said, I'm not going back to Canada to Mr.

Davis.

Davis stared at her in disbelief.

He wasn't very happy and he said, no, you've got to go back, give the man a second chance.

It's normal to struggle when you move at first.

You can't leave Ron now.

He needs you.

You need each other.

And he really tried to persuade me and I did consider it but then

I thought no

I've had enough.

I just wanted to be on my own I think to be honest.

Then when he realizes that's not going to happen he says right we need to find you somewhere to live.

He took her around her hometown to show her some of the housing options and her price range.

So he's driving me around these bed seats in Harrogate and it's like what a bizarre experience.

I'm thinking is this really what's happened to me, my life?

I'm ending up in a bedsy.

Riding shotgun, Elaine couldn't believe how different the dynamic was between them.

After all the interest he'd showered on her, all they'd done together, now all she got was a patronizing, maybe you could afford this crummy room in this crummy house with these weirdos, Elaine.

Or of course, you could always go back to Ron, in which case I'd happily pay for your flight.

But Elaine was unwavering, and for some unexplained reason, Davis seemed annoyed.

Before he left, Davis told Elaine that he'd be spending some time in Scotland and then be moving to France, most likely.

So the only way she'd be able to reach him was through a PO box that he'd set up in London.

And then he was gone.

For Elaine, it was hard to stand up, hard to exist on her own.

Her being alone muscles had atrophied, like an astronaut feeling gravity again.

She had to start over.

While Davis had effectively disappeared himself from Elaine's life, Ron, alone in Canada, was slowly beginning to understand that Elaine really wasn't coming back.

We communicated by letter because there's a lot of letters going backwards and forwards where he was trying to persuade me to go back.

He was really brokenhearted, and I felt really, I do feel bad about that.

Ron would send things in the mail to her.

I'd get these boxes with pans and pots and all sorts of things.

Why has he sent these back?

One time, it was just a toothbrush.

It was as if he could only process through one object at a time that she was gone for good.

The year following, in 1994, Elaine went to Italy to teach English for a bit.

Italy strikes me as the perfect palate cleanser after a winter in in Calgary.

Her relationship with Ron settled into that vague purgatory where all of our exes live, where there's no direct contact, but you might hear things through the grapevine, like, oh, he got a job at Radio Shack?

Good for him.

And Davis would keep tabs on Elaine by calling her mother from time to time.

So he'd find out from my mum, how's Elaine?

What's she doing?

That sort of thing.

And this is how things were between the triangle of Elaine and Ron and Davis.

They had drifted apart, become constellations in different parts of the sky.

But then, in early 1995, 18 months after Elaine had left Ron in Calgary.

Ron writes to me to tell me that he's thinking of coming back to England.

Can't cope with the winters and and I've decided I'm coming back to England for good.

he was clear he said i'm not coming back to disrupt your life i'm just coming back

and then shortly after that guess who suddenly wanted to talk not to elaine's mother but to elaine

mr davis rang me and he'd learned that ron was coming back from canada

And he was perturbed.

I could tell he was annoyed with Ron coming back.

Why does he want to come back?

And I said, well,

he's got it out of his system.

He doesn't like the winters, the harsh winters there.

He's lonely.

And he's convinced me that he's happy to come back to England and he's got it out of his system.

But he was, yeah, he was very perturbed.

And that perturbed me.

The fact that he was frustrated and annoyed that Ron was coming back.

When I put the phone down, that did worry me.

I remember talking to my mum and saying, I don't understand it.

I don't understand what it's got to do with Mr.

Davis, if Ron wants to come back or not.

Why is he upset?

This feeling stayed with Elaine for days.

The question wouldn't leave her.

For what possible reason would Davis be upset about Ron coming back to England?

And it's here, with this question spinning in Elaine's mind, that something changed.

The combination of Davis not being there for Elaine when she moved back, and then this annoyance with Ron, she just had a bad feeling about it.

And she had to say something to Ron.

When Ron said he was coming back to England, I said, be careful, because I don't trust him.

Ron said to me on the phone, he said, Mr.

Davies has offered to meet me at the airport.

And I had a really, really bad feeling.

I had a horrible, horrible dark feeling about him being picked up in his car and that's that's how often stayed with me.

Once Ron was back in England, he stayed out of Elaine's orbit like he promised he would.

Elaine continued getting patchy information through the grapevine about Ron.

I heard he's moved to Essex.

He's found a job down there.

I heard he's living not too far from David Davis.

Davis stopped calling Elaine and Elaine's mom at regular intervals.

They had essentially lost touch.

This was over the period of months.

But then one day, there was a very boring issue with Elaine's mom's house.

They talked to a lawyer about it.

They didn't like what they said.

So they wanted a second opinion.

I wanted to speak to somebody else, and I thought, oh, David would be a really good guy.

He's a professional businessman.

He might be able to give me some advice.

Sure, he left me high and dry and more or less ruined my life for a minute there.

But the man does no business.

So Elaine, for the first time in over a year, calls Davis.

Noel answered, and Noel said that dad wasn't at home.

As ever, Noel didn't divulge an ounce more than the minimum.

So I said, well, can you get him to ring me as soon as you can?

I need to talk to him about the house case.

And she said, oh, okay, I'll do that.

And he didn't phone.

So that...

was another blow for me.

I thought, well, so much for, you know, ringing me back sort of thing when it was urgent.

So

I moved on.

I sorted the problem myself.

But then four days later, Davis finally did return her call.

It would end up being the second most important phone call of Elaine's life.

We just had a general chat, and then I just asked him out the blue, have you heard from Ron recently?

And he said, he said, oh,

he's gone to, he went to France at the beginning of June.

And I was

again stunned because I thought, gone to France?

Why on earth would he go to France?

Elaine knew Ron better than any person on earth.

And the idea that a man who had failed to establish himself in Canada and England would somehow have a go of it in a country where he knew no one and didn't even speak the language?

Yeah,

Elaine wasn't buying that.

And I actually challenged him.

I actually said, you know what?

He's gone to France.

He said, yeah, yeah, he's gone over to the La Rochelle area in France to set up a TV repair business.

And I mean, I was shocked.

But as I was talking to him, I had a little voice that said,

get off the phone.

Get off the phone, Elaine.

So I changed the subject and I got myself off the phone because I didn't feel very comfortable with the conversation that we'd had.

And then there's nothing for two weeks.

It's important to note that it was two weeks between the phone call and the next unusual thing that happened in Elaine's life.

Elaine was working at her office job when her mom showed up.

She never came to Elaine's work.

It was a pleasant surprise until Elaine saw her mother's expression.

I could tell by her face and her eyes that there was something worrying her and that she was going to tell me something.

So they found a private spot, and her mom said, there was a call to the house from the police in Devon.

They found a dead body in the ocean.

They think it's Ron.

I was stunned, and I froze.

And I actually thought...

I actually thought maybe he'd committed suicide.

Elaine knew all too well how dark things could get for Ron.

There were times in their relationship where she would be afraid to come home after work, worried at what she'd find.

If I opened the door and there was no sound, I used to think, I used to wonder, am I going to find him,

you know, done something to himself?

Maybe it had finally all become too much.

And the reason I thought that was because David had told me that Ron had gone to France at the beginning of June and they'd found his body off the coast of Devon, so it made sense to me that he must maybe thrown himself, gone on the ferry to France and thrown himself overboard.

That was my first thought.

Elaine's mom told Elaine to grab her coat.

The Devon police would be calling her at 7 o'clock.

And this phone call would be the most important call of Elaine's life.

Sergeant Bill MacDonald introduced himself, told her that they'd found a body in the midsummer that they'd ID'd as Ron.

He asked her about his tattoo and Rolex.

But then, a bombshell.

In the conversation, he mentioned that they'd spoken to Mr.

Davis.

So I said, oh, I said,

how long ago did you speak to Mr.

Davis?

And he said, oh, weeks ago.

So I went quiet.

And I said, how many weeks ago?

And he said, oh, five or six weeks ago.

And of course I just froze.

I couldn't speak because I knew I'd spoken to him about two or three weeks earlier.

Even over the phone, Bill MacDonald could sense that Elaine was suddenly distant.

So he said, what's wrong, Nirain?

He said, I'm getting really bad vibes from you.

And that's when I turned around and said, well, I spoke to this man, David Davis, two to three weeks weeks ago.

And in that conversation, he explained that Ron had gone to France.

He told me this story about Ron going to France.

And you're saying you spoke to him five or six weeks ago, and he should have told me that Ron had died.

And if he didn't want to tell me Ron had died, he should have informed you so that you could tell me.

So that was a shock.

That was a real shock.

And I was really panicking.

And he says, Well, we want to come and actually talk to you.

As detective Ian Clenahan drove up to Harrogate to meet Elaine for the first time, after months of follow-ups leading nowhere and every tiny bit of progress earned the hard way, it felt like the truth was now the one pursuing them.

It had been one week since Peter Redmond had accidentally discovered that David Davis appeared to be living as Ronald Platt in a small village in Essex called Woodham Walter.

And one week since the chief of police ordered his detectives to figure out who the man living in the little London farmhouse really was.

Okay, let's find out everything we can about the occupants of that house.

Who's paying the electricity, the council tax, the gas, the water, the utilities at that address?

So the police put out a flurry of inquiries.

And sure enough, it comes back that all these utilities for the house are being paid in the name of Ronald Platt.

Bills have been issued and, in fact, paid after the discovery of the body in the sea.

This is now looking interesting to say the least.

A week later, Clenahan sat across from Elaine for the first time in Harrogate, where things would accelerate even further.

And they showed me the Rolex watch.

They showed me the tattoo.

We were there for probably an hour and a half.

It was clear to Clenahan that Elaine was very suspicious of David Davis herself and was still spooked about the phone call.

I've spoken to him after you've spoken to him, and he hasn't told me that Ron's dead.

Well, why would he not tell me Ron's dead?

And the next question that emerged from their chat.

Why, in all his conversations with police, had Davis failed to mention a little diddy about him paying for Elaine and Ron to move overseas?

Well, hang on a minute.

This is really strange.

You know, David hadn't told us any of it.

Elaine told police that Davis named them directors of his company, funded their apartment, bankrolled Ron's TV repair business, and that he essentially paid for their whole move.

She filled in so many of the gaps, so many bits of information.

It was at that point that you start to realize that actually David Davis is a central figure.

While the interview with Elaine had been thoroughly illuminating for police, Elaine left their conversation more bewildered than ever.

They didn't say anything about how he died at all.

It was strange because when I got home, I said to my mum, You know, the police they're not giving anything away.

They haven't told me anything.

So I was still in the dark, to be perfectly honest, I was still in the dark.

Just before the detectives were about to head back to Devon, Elaine, quite shaken by all of this, asked, What should I do if Davis shows up or tries to contact me?

And they said, Not to worry.

He likely won't.

So in late late October 1996, at the end of a very fruitful week of discovery, the police took stock of what they had.

They could prove conclusively that Davis was paying bills and signing documents as Ronald Platt.

So they had him on that.

But they didn't go and arrest him there and then, because everyone sensed there was more to this.

And we were sort of brainstorming, like, well, what we're looking at?

What could be going on?

Was he posing as Platt to do something nefarious?

Did he need to stop being David Davis for some reason?

Or was it something more?

Was he involved in Ron's death?

Because if Davis was in any way involved in Ron's drowning death in Devon, the police needed more.

In all the research we were doing around him, there was nothing to offer any connection at all with Devon.

It still left so many questions unanswered.

Why was Ronald Platt in Devon?

Why was he in the sea?

What were the circumstances that led to his drowning?

To get to the truth, they needed one more thing on their side.

Luck.

We were so lucky.

And that's one of the main things that I will talk about about this job is the luck involved.

And it is luck involved.

When people commit a crime, they will always make a mistake.

Nobody commits the perfect crime.

Nobody, and I firmly believe that, because everyone will make a mistake.

When Clenahan and MacDonald put out their first wave of inquiries a couple weeks prior, one of the requests to the phone company took longer than the others to come back.

And it was worth the wait.

So back then, same as now, you can go to a mobile company and they'll tell you where the phone, what part of Britain the phone was in at various times.

And his phone showed that he was down in Devon at the relevant time of when Ron went missing.

The same phone that Davis was calling Clenahan anxiously on for the past few months had been pinging all around the coast in late July, both where and when Ron's body was found.

And it was then momentum was gathering.

We were able to find out all the telephone numbers he'd phoned.

We were able to find out that he'd stayed in bed and breakfast.

So then you go and speak to the people there and see what they could tell us.

He was signed into one BNB as David Davis, while Ron Platt was at another nearby.

Why were they staying in different places in the same area at the same time?

And then another bombshell.

Someone said that he'd been seen on his boat in the River Dart.

I mean, it just, it went from A to Z very, very quickly.

It was was just everything was falling into our lap.

It went from nothing to like, oh my God, this is, this is a, this is a murder.

You know, we are looking at a murder.

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So at this exact moment, as the police are getting Davis dead to rights through their investigation in Devon, 500 kilometers away, Elaine, who knows nothing of the police breakthroughs, is sitting at her desk.

I'm at work.

I'm concerned about Ron's death.

And all of a sudden, I get a telephone call.

And it's David Davis.

And I'm thinking, oh my God, it's David Davis.

And I didn't know what to say.

Anyway, he said, oh, hi, Elaine.

It's me.

It's David.

How are you?

And he was really, really upbeat.

And I didn't know what to say.

Anyway, I just thought, well, I better better be be honest and just say to him well David I'm not very good actually have you heard about Ron

he replied that yes he had heard and his complete demeanor changed his voice changed and he said oh yes he said I was going to send his mum some flowers and it was very scary because he what he said was he said I'm in Leeds Leeds is just 16 miles away He said, I want to come and talk to you and take you for lunch.

And I tried to escape from that.

I tried to say, well, Well, actually, I don't have a lunch break.

And he said, No, I really want to come and see you.

They've got to let you have a break.

Everybody's entitled to a lunch break.

So I said, Well, okay.

I said, I actually work in the office at an upmarket coffee shop in Harrogate.

If I give you the directions, we can have a coffee.

How about that?

So he said, Yeah, that's fine.

So I said, I'll be there within 40 minutes.

Put the phone down, and I literally froze.

Oh my God, he's coming.

I was scared because

I felt he was guilty.

Whether it was an argument, whether it was a fight, whatever it was, he was involved with Ron's death.

I just knew it.

I just knew it here.

I just know.

Sometimes you've got to trust your gut instinct, and my gut instinct said he was involved.

In what shape or form, I didn't know, but he was involved and he was covering it up.

With only 40 minutes until Davis arrived, Elaine had to scramble to prepare herself.

The priority is: I need to phone the police.

I need to phone Bill McDonald and let him know that David Davis is actually on the way to the office.

So that's what I did.

She called the Devon police and said she needed McDonald fast.

I phone her and she's in a state of real panic.

He's going to be here in 20 minutes.

What do I do?

We didn't have any resources on the ground in Harrogate at that point.

So the only advice I could give Elaine was to carry on with the ploy of go ahead meet him but if you do meet him meet him in public, meet him somewhere where you feel comfortable.

Limit your time with him, be with him as short a time as possible, don't ask him any questions and as soon as he's gone give us a ring.

So she gets off the phone and stares into space, adrenaline coursing, trying to prepare herself when her boss swung by.

And she said, what's wrong?

What's wrong with you?

And I said,

you and the police both said that he wouldn't come anywhere near me, this man.

He's on his way now from Leeds train station through to Harrogate to meet me here.

So,

you know, she looked at me and she said, you are, you've sent a murderer to my office.

With just a few minutes to spare, Elaine devised a plan with her boss Carolyn and her colleague Ken.

to create an escape hatch.

They'd stay close, keep an eye on her, and after 15 to 20 minutes had passed, they'd stop by Davis and Elaine's conversation to urge Elaine back upstairs to the office.

And then it was time.

In the moments before he got here, I was extremely nervous and extremely agitated.

She looked to the door, and there he was, Mr.

Davis,

smiling the smile from the day he first walked into Elaine's art auctioneer job and offered her the world.

It felt like a lifetime ago.

This is where he came, yeah.

And this is where we sat, probably around about here now, on these lovely cozy armchairs opposite each other.

It was a very surreal experience, to be honest, because I hadn't seen David since 1993.

And now it was the day before Halloween, 1996.

over three years since they'd last seen each other.

So naturally, they had a lot to catch up on.

We talked about Ron.

We talked about what Ron was like

and how sad it was

that he'd died.

He explained that

how he felt sorry, sad for Ron and how he'd shed tears for him on the way up on the train, which I found a bit disturbing

because his eyes glazed over.

But for some reason I sort of sensed that it was acting.

I didn't feel it was genuine tears.

In the pocket of their brief, strange conversation, Elaine had to keep reminding herself of what the police told her.

But even though she was advised not to ask any questions, she couldn't help herself.

She asked him how often he would see Ron in Essex.

He said that they'd meet up about once a week for coffee, just like this.

He asked me something and he said to me, he said, I don't know what to do with Ron's possessions.

And I looked at him and I said, what do you mean, Ron's possessions?

Well, you know, all his things.

And I said, oh, I said, I don't think the police know where his things are.

And he suddenly changed the subject.

It was supremely uncomfortable for Elaine to sit with him.

But thankfully, right on schedule, Elaine's colleagues showed up to bail her out.

Ken came out and sort of looked at his watch and pointed at, you know, sort of indicated, come back into the office, Elaine.

I sort of said, oh, look, I've got to go, David.

I said, they've been really, really good.

But then with time running out.

Just as I was about to leave, he did say, the police don't know what happened, do they?

And I said, no, I said, they don't.

He finally let on that he was nervous about the police calling him so often.

He told Elaine that they contacted him earlier in the week and they wanted him to come in yet again to give another statement about Ron.

And I said, oh, David, it's nothing to worry about.

I said, they'll just be trying to close the case.

And they're just ticking boxes, basically.

So I was actually trying to put him at ease.

I wanted him to think that I didn't know anything and I didn't have any suspicions.

I certainly didn't want him to be suspicious of me at all.

Her colleagues, angels as they were, motioned for Elaine once more.

I don't want to lose my job, David.

You know, I bet I better go, I better get back into the office.

And he said, Oh, no, no, I don't want you to lose your job either.

And then, as he stood up, and I was walking towards the door, he sort of held my hand in his hand and said, You know, I really do care for you.

And he looked me right in the eyes.

And I just sort of smiled and nodded.

He said, I'll be back up in Harrogate in a couple of weeks, and maybe I'll take you out to dinner.

And at that point, I felt quite sick and I thought, oh, I just want to get into the office.

I just wanted to escape, really.

Yeah, that was really, really hard.

That was, it was almost like you were just desperate to get away and get back into the office and phone the police and get him out, really.

After Elaine relayed the details of their conversation and described that Davis seemed to have great anxiety about meeting with the detectives, The following day, the police decided that they needed to arrest Davis now.

He was scheduled to show up at the Chelmsford police station in Essex the following afternoon to give a statement, but they suspected he might be on to them.

They believed Davis to be traveling by train from Harrogate to Essex that evening.

So an officer, equipped with Elaine's description of what he was wearing in the cafe, waited for him at the train station in Chelmsford.

But either he missed him or he wasn't on the train.

The next morning was Halloween, 1996.

Detective Peter Redmond, the same Peter Redmond who had fatefully knocked on the wrong door in Woodham Walter two weeks earlier, had a big day ahead of him.

His department in Essex had been given the green light by Devon to arrest David Davis at their earliest opportunity.

The plan was originally that they'd arrest him when he showed up to the police station later that day, but Redmond didn't trust that he'd show up.

They didn't even know if he was on the train the night before.

So before heading to work that morning, Redmond needed to check something.

On the morning of the 31st, I came to work at Chelmser, but I took a slight detour.

quite a detour actually and came this way droving down from Danbury into Wooden Water

to see if there was any sign of life at the house.

Redmond wanted to see if Davis had in fact made it home safely to Little London farmhouse and see if his car was in the driveway.

So he pulled into Little London Lane and stopped.

Davis's car was back.

I came up here.

I think I turned into the lane, saw the car was on the drive, and backed out again and looked for somewhere to sit

and wait.

The trees were bare and I got a reasonable view.

Redmond got comfortable and radioed in that Davis was back at home and that they should get the firearm squad ready to head to Woodham Walter.

The Essex police they weren't comfortable just doing what we would call a routine arrest,

that actually we would look to arrest David Davis using a firearms deployment.

And that in itself is very serious.

In other countries, officers routinely carry firearms.

In Britain and England, that isn't the case.

The reason they made the decision to bring guns was straightforward.

They believed two things of David Davis.

that he was likely responsible for the death of Ron Platt, and two,

he was American.

And what is something that that Americans are famous for?

So it's in this moment, with Redmond's eyes on the farmhouse and waiting for the firearm squad to arrive, that something unexpected happens.

A taxi appears and pulls into Little London Lane.

I saw a taxi going down the lane, going past them, and he went down and then came back and stopped somewhere between the two.

From this angle, I couldn't see which house he'd stopped in front of.

Couldn't see which house he'd actually gone to.

When taxi driver Morris Cooch drove into Little London Lane, like every other person who's ever turned in, he got lost.

So he pulled a UE and headed back toward the road when the person who ordered the cab suddenly appeared and flagged him down.

He's got in the car or he's got in the front seat, which is normally a good sign.

People are normally quite happy to chat to you when they get in the front seat.

If you get in the back, you think, hmm, don't want some taxi driver chatting away to them.

From Redmond's vantage point, all of a sudden the cab pulled out and started driving toward town before he could make out who had gotten the car.

Shit, was that Davis?

Or did the cab pick up one of the other folks across the lane?

So had to take a chance that he'd actually picked up

at Little London Farmhouse rather than Little London House.

So Redmond made a split-second decision.

He left his post and pursued the cab.

He grabbed for his phone to alert MacDonald, but there was no signal.

So he drove along, hanging a couple cars back.

Lots of things were going through my mind at this point.

Have I done the right thing?

But having committed to it, you've got to see these things through.

They turned onto a busier road that leads back to Chelmsford.

So Redman has to get closer to ensure he doesn't lose the taxi, its occupants still unaware they're being tailed.

We were chatting to each other as we were going along, you know.

So he obviously had a bit of an accent.

I mean he it was plainly obvious that he wasn't an Essex chap if you know what me.

At this point I know there's a passenger in the taxi,

but I can't see who it is and I'm taking the chance that it is our man.

Redmond finally got a signal and made contact with the Devon crew.

Here's Clenahan.

We were all kind of sat at Paynton Police Station, like waiting for news.

It was one of those, you know, everyone's just, you know, tapping tables and walking around and, you know, pacing up and down.

McDonald took the call from Redmond, and immediately he was coordinating with the firearm squad, trying to help them reroute reroute to find their way to Redmond and the taxi.

They said that the armed response vehicle was near

and was making its way to me.

I do remember pulling out of here sharply to stay close to them.

You can lose them very quickly.

As Redman followed the taxi around another turn, he kept checking his rear view anxiously.

And I was wondering where the armed response vehicle were going to appear.

Finally, he saw them.

Two traffic cars roared past Redmond with a wink and turned on their lights.

There was a police car come up with lights flashing behind me, and I just thought he was on an emergency.

And I pulled over slowly to let him pass.

The next thing I noticed, there was another car come flying past and went right across in front of me and boxed me in.

The police approached the cab, holding up their jackets to reveal their weapons.

There's a policeman pointing a gun in the car, screaming at him.

Saying, look in my, get out of the car, get out, look in my eyes, keep your hand down by your side.

It's quite frightening.

Redmond got out of his car and was finally able to confirm with his own eyes.

Thank God, the right man was in the cab.

He bounded toward him as he was being handcuffed.

Do you remember me, Mr.

Davis?

Oh, yes.

Yes, I remember you.

I'm arresting your suspicion of the the murder of ronald platt

and they had him

back in devon clenhan and the other police were elated to learn that after months of mystery they now had an explanation and a suspect in custody

and we're just thinking wow david davis you're stuffed we're going to prove that david davis has has killed Ronald Platt, you know?

When the police searched David Davis right there on the side of the road, in one pocket he had an apple, and in the other pocket, he had two IDs: one for David Davis, and one for Ronald Platt.

But what the police had no inkling of was that this man in their custody was neither David Davis nor Ronald Platt.

He was, in fact, a man called Albert Walker, one of the most wanted men in the world.

Coming up on Sea of Lies.

How much do you want me to tell you?

How many rabbit holes do you want to go down?

I will only say this in terms of a rant.

You say you hate your boss, you say you hate whoever,

and I say no.

Maybe you do, maybe you don't, but I know that I don't hate anybody because I know what it feels like to truly hate somebody, right?

And,

you know,

that's the guy.

Sea of Lies is produced by What's the Story Sounds for CBC.

It's hosted and written by me, Sam Mullins, and produced and reported by Alex Gatenby.

Mixing and sound design is by Ivan Eastley.

From What's the Story Sounds?

Our executive producers are David Waters and Daryl Brown.

At CBC Podcasts, the senior producers are Andrew Friesen and Damon Fairless.

Eunice Kim is our story editor.

Emily Cannell is our digital coordinating producer.

Executive producers are Cecil Fernandez and Chris Oak.

Senior manager is Tonya Springer.

And the director of CBC Podcasts is Arif Nurani.

For more CBC podcasts, go to cbc.ca/slash podcasts.