Baptiste, episode 3 recap: as the plot twists continue, Julien found himself in his own EastEnders-style moment

The tense, twisting thriller reached its midway point with an episode titled For Blood, which came with stolen loot, rampaging Romanians and shock revelations.

The severed head belonged to Stratton’s father

Ooh, you are offal. Last week’s final scene saw silvery sleuth Julien Baptiste (Tchéky Karyo) discover the decapitated head rotting in the Antwerp basement of stubbly Edward Stratton (Tom Hollander). “I think we must talk,” said Baptiste with wry understatement.

Stratton confessed the exact nature of his involvement in the case: he was a victim of blackmail, having helped the missing, found, then drowned Polish sex worker Natalie Rose (Anna Anna Prochniak) steal from the people-trafficking Romanian mob.

Grieving for his own teenage daughter Lucy, who died by suicide five years ago, Stratton became fixated by lookalike Natalie (“It was like staring at a phantom”) and started visiting nightly. Natalie overheard the Brigada Serbilu talking about one million euros in cash. She roped in Stratton to rob it and buy the freedom of her 15-year-old sister Christina, who’d been snatched by the traffickers.

However, psychopathic gangster Constantin Baracu (Alec Secăreanu) – a hired killer who “enjoys his work” – knew he’d been ripped off by Stratton. Unless he returned the money, Constantin threatened to “remove your father’s head from its body”. When Natalie refused, Stratton said: “There it was: my father’s head on the kitchen f---ing table.” We prefer a fruitbowl ourselves.

So was “Uncle” Edward telling the truth this time? Why did Natalie insist last week that he was a dangerous criminal? And why was he running around with a gun, spooking women with talk of disembowelling rodents in his schooldays? “All I know is that you’re not safe, Julien,” concluded Stratton. “Constantin met your wife and he knows where your family are…”

Baptiste’s wife escaped the killer gas man

Cut to “gas man” Constantin visiting Baptiste’s wife Celia (Anastasia Hille) to “read the meter”. She was in mortal peril but Julien couldn’t reach her by phone – those matching mobile covers, casually mentioned last week, meant her daughter took both phones by mistake – so a panicking Baptiste sent in the local police. They found Celia missing and the flat in disarray.

Thankfully, she was alive and in one piece. She’d recognised the gas man as that dodgy bloke from the supermarket, slammed the door in his face and fled to somewhere well-lit with CCTV cameras. Smart woman.

Baptiste moved his family to a safehouse in Almere, half an hour away in the Dutch countryside, guarded by old friends. His daughter wasn’t happy but hey, at least she was still in possession of a head.

Enter the Goth cop with a grudge

For the second week running, a pre-credits scene introduced a new character in a medical setting. This time it was Europol officer Genevieve Taylor (former Call the Midwife star Jessica Raine), visiting a wheelchair-bound man named Lucas (played by disabled Dutch actor Marc de Hond). Her partner or brother, perhaps?

Either way, she felt responsible for his disability, which wasn’t just physical. “Are you even in there anymore?” she pleaded. “If you are, I’m so sorry.” Clad in all-black, blunt yet brittle, listening to psych-metal (Geordie band Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs, to be precise), Taylor seemed to have a personal interest in Brigada Serbilu. Maybe the Romanian gang were somehow responsible for Lucas’s condition.

The arrest warrant against Constantin caught Taylor’s attention and she came to Amsterdam to persuade Edward to wear a wire to meet Constantin, while dismissing Baptiste as an interfering presence in her cross-border investigation. Uncooperative, hangdog Stratton simply told her to “p--s off” and stormed out. So that went well.

The tulip farmer lost his grandsons inheritance

We last saw tulip farmer Herman (Gijs de Lange) tenderly lifting a young boy from his hospital bed, surmising that this could be his grandson. So it proved.

Natalie had vowed that if she couldn’t save her sister, she’d somehow get the money to her father and ask him to raise her secret four-year-old son Matty, having lost custody to her abusive, drug-addicted ex-boyfriend Thijs De Boer (Teun Kuilboer).

After the holdall stuffed with euros was found by Herman’s loyal hound Caspar and he received that emotional letter from Natalie, he duly carried out his daughter’s last wishes. Matty was in hospital for an operation on his spleen but Herman took him out early and hit the road. When his car broke down, Herman simply bought a new one with the cash – but seemingly attracted some unwelcome attention in the process.

Safely home on his farm, Herman paid a friend to lash Matty up to a drip while he recovered. When the boy woke up, Herman gently told Matty, “Your mummy wants you to live with me… because your daddy can’t take care of you.”

Slight snag: when Herman nipped outside to fetch the cash, his car had been broken into and the holdall was gone. Oh, Herman. He’d lost a million overnight, like an inept stockbroker.

Constantin worked out Kim’s secret

With his arrest warrant cancelled, Constantin was still at large and cornered café owner Kim Vogel (Talisa Garcia) at the flower market. He’d tailed Natalie’s friend Lina (Martha Canga Antonio) to Kim’s café and also traced ownership of Natalie’s houseboat hideaway to fugitive mob boss Dragomir Zelencu.

Putting two and two together to make five, Constantin realised that Kim was Dragomir after gender reassignment. “Is it really you?” he snarled. “I always knew you were a f----t.” Coolly unphased, Kim insisted “Dragomir is dead” and denied any knowledge of the missing million euros – despite Constantin’s quip about her having “the balls” to steal it.

Constantin was soon bundling Stratton into the back of a car, telling him: “Don’t fight it, Edward. It'll just make it harder.” Uh-oh. Poor Stratton looked like a traumatised potato.

Baptiste’s sidekick was his long-lost son

Julien Baptiste, meet junior Baptiste. Hands up if you saw this development coming?

Annoyed by Europol stomping all over her station, police commissioner Martha Horchner (Barbara Sarafian) paired up Baptiste with her son, ambitious cop Niels (Boris Van Severen), to make their own enquiries into the missing money.

Forming a neat inter-generational double act, they discovered that someone had doctored the hospital CCTV footage at the time of Matty’s premature departure. Baptiste worked out it was his nurse, visited her at home and noticed a huge new TV bought with the proceeds of a bribe. She reluctantly told him who’d really taken the boy.

There were vague visual hints that Niels might be up to something dodgy. We’d already heard how the Romanian mob had the police in their pocket. Surely the commissioner’s own son couldn’t be corrupt?

Baptiste and Niels sipped coffee on the hospital roof terrace and discussed their respective recoveries from cancer. However, this intimate chat turned out to be a cunning ruse by the older man to pocket the youngster’s coffee cup and send it off for DNA testing.

Cue Julien limping around to Martha’s house. “All this time you lied to me,” he said on her doorstep. “Why didn’t you tell me Niels is my son?” If this series could have played EastEnders-style doof-doofs, now would have been a good time.

Baptiste finds cash and another villain next time

The series enters its home stretch next Sunday, when reckless Stratton puts the entire case in jeopardy and Julien’s follows the money to a depraved, creepy stranger. Meet you back here to unpick all the hot Euro-crime action.