Death by Mercurio: the 10 most shocking Line of Duty exits

When rogue undercover officer DS John Corbett (played by the superlative Stephen Graham) met a grisly end in last week’s episode of Line of Duty, it was the latest in the BBC corruption thriller’s tradition of shocking deaths.

For five tense series, writer Jed Mercurio has kept viewers enthralled with his willingness to kill off characters, no matter how well-loved or how well-known the actor playing them.

We’ve counted down the show’s 10 most jaw-dropping ends. Warning: contains spoilers (and blood)…

10. FC Tim Ifield (Jason Watkins)

(Series 4, episode 1)

Tim Ifield, a forensic co-ordinator, kick-started series four by alerting anti-corruption unit AC-12 to a potential miscarriage of justice, claiming that DCI Roz Huntley (Thandie Newton) was framing a suspected serial killer. When Huntley confronted her geeky colleague at his home, Ifield pushed Huntley and she hit her head on a kitchen worktop; the injury looked fatal. Ifield panicked and decided to dispose of the body; he was poised to take a power saw to Huntley’s head when she suddenly awoke.

The pair then struggled over the whirring tool; it nicked Ifield’s jugular vein, and he bled to death. In his last act, he clawed at Huntley’s wrist to trap some skin cells, and thus her DNA, under his nails. The scratch would ultimately lead to the amputation of her hand, and seal her guilt.

9. DCS Lester Hargreaves (Tony Pitts)

(Series 5, episode 3)

When Corbett’s gang pulled off an audacious heist at Eastfield Depot, where three police forces store seized goods, they needed the help of a bent officer. Several signs pointed to it being avuncular AC-12 boss Supt Ted Hastings (Adrian Dunbar), so viewers held their breath when a balaclava-clad man stepped out of an unmarked police vehicle.

After Corbett shot him in the legs, causing fatal injuries, DI Kate Fleming (Vicky McClure) rushed to the mystery man’s aid and pulled off his mask. Was it Hastings? No, it was another cop with the “H” initial: stroppy Yorkshireman Les Hargreaves, who’d been a thorn in anti-corruption’s side for three series.

8. DI Matthew “Dot” Cottan (Craig Parkinson)

(Series 3, episode 6)

The slippery inside man codenamed “the Caddy” had long been pulling strings for organised crime, but was finally unmasked in the finale of series three. When he faltered under interrogation, Dot sent the text message “Urgent exit required”, and a corrupt firearms officer entered, guns blazing.

Fleming pursued them across the city centre, managing to shoot the getaway driver. But when his accomplice took aim at Kate herself, Dot took the bullet on his colleague’s behalf and died at the roadside – though not before recording a dying declaration that’s still having effects two series later.

7. PC Maneet Bindra (Maya Sondhi)

(Series 5, episode 1)

The cult heroine and admin queen of AC-12 found herself compromised early this series, when she tried to protect her cousin. She was fired by the righteously angry Hastings. Guilt-stricken and desperate to put things right, Maneet tried to turn into an undercover double agent but was soon rumbled by Corbett, who ordered her death. His thugs cruelly cut Maneet’s throat on a quayside jetty, and left her bleeding out.

Hastings rescinded her sacking, meaning that at the time of her death, Maneet was a serving officer killed in the line of duty, entitling her to a police funeral and her family to her pension.

6. DCI Tony Gates (Lennie James)

(Series 1, episode 5)

Award-winning officer Gates was where it all began. AC-12 had their suspicions aroused by his high crime-solving rate, and began to dig. They discovered that Gates had been compromised by an extra-marital affair and a desire to send his children to a fee-paying school, which enabled him to be blackmailed by an organised crime syndicate.

In the final scenes of the debut series, Gates arrested gang leader Tommy Hunter before committing suicide by suddenly stepping in front of a lorry – first asking DS Steve Arnott (Martin Compston) to tell his wife that he was killed in the line of duty, thus ensuring that his beloved daughters would be provided for.

5. DS John Corbett (Stephen Graham)

(Series 5, episode 4)

The most recent Line of Duty death was that of Corbett. Sent undercover into the criminal fraternity on a mission to expose links with corrupt officers, he’d crossed the line to maintain his deep cover and AC-12 were after him. Gangland second-in-command Lisa McQueen (Rochenda Sandall) also had her suspicions. When Corbett valiantly tried to free a vanload of trafficked women, the gang were lying in wait. They coldly slit his throat, echoing the death of Maneet three weeks previously – which Corbett himself had ordered.

“You’re a rat, John,” snarled McQueen as he died. “A rat.”

4. Jackie Laverty (Gina McKee)

(Series 1, episode 2)

This was the show’s first shock death, our first sighting of “Balaclava Man” and the scene that announced Mercurio’s rug-pulling intentions. Laverty, a property developer, was DCI Tony Gates’s lover. Little did he know, she was secretly laundering money for organised crime.

The couple were in a clinch at Laverty’s house when masked intruders forced their way in, knocked Gates unconscious, slit Laverty’s throat and placed Gates’s fingerprints on the murder weapon. A modest new police drama just went up a gear.

(And as we saw last week, Laverty’s corpse is still in frozen storage, just in case the group needs to use it…)

3. Sgt Danny Waldron (Daniel Mays)

(Series 3, episode 2)

As an acclaimed actor, Mays was widely assumed to have been cast as a series-long antagonist – until Mercurio blindsided the viewers by swiftly killing him off. The third run began with an armed response team, led by Waldron, deployed to detain a suspect – whom Waldron promptly shot in cold blood. AC-12 investigated, with Fleming sent undercover into Waldron’s squad.

When they raided a drugs house, Fleming heard gunfire, and ran in to find Waldron shot in the neck and his team standing over him as he bled out. She tried to provide first aid but he died. It later transpired that Waldron’s victim had sexually abused him as a boy. His colleague PC Harinderpal “Hari” Bains then shot Waldron, on the Caddy’s orders, to hush up a paedophile ring. Danny, however, had bravely left “a list” behind…

2. DI Lindsay Denton (Keeley Hawes)

(Series 3, episode 5)

“Steely Keeley” was arguably AC-12’s greatest foe, and she made a surprise return in the third series, having been given a life sentence at the end of the previous run. Freed on appeal, Denton teamed up with Arnott and discovered Danny Waldron’s list of paedophiles.

Corrupt “Dot” Cottan held her at gunpoint and demanded she hand it over, but Denton, staying true to her moral duty as a former police officer, defiantly emailed it to Hastings and AC-12. Cottan shot her at point-blank range, blood spattering the interior of the car. (Two years later, Mercurio would suddenly kill off Hawes again in Bodyguard.)

1. DC Georgia Trotman (Jessica Raine)

(Series 2, episode 1)

This was a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it death, but all the more gut-punching for that. Fresh from her lead role in BBC stablemate Call the Midwife, Jessica Raine joined AC-12 as Arnott’s ambitious new partner, Georgia Trotman. She’d been on-screen for precisely 45 minutes when the duo raced to the hospital to protect a seriously injured witness, only to find him being murdered by an assassin disguised as a nurse.

Arnott was knocked unconscious, but Trotman saw the killer’s face, so she was unceremoniously thrown out of the fifth-floor window to her death. All bets were off. Mercurio could kill off anyone, at any time, and the nation was under Line of Duty’s spell.

Line of Duty returns on Sunday at 9pm on BBC One

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