Acceptable Risk (2017) s01e06 Episode Script

1 There's the gates of mercy and the gates of justice, Sarah.
There's the gates of what? Hey! I have just attended the funeral of my head of security.
He tried to intervene in an illegal surveillance operation carried out by an employee of your embassy.
I came to resolve this matter quietly.
And what are you offering? I've been thinking of taking some time off.
There's this one file, though.
You can have it if you want it.
Follow it where it goes, to whoever it goes to.
We received a call concerning you and your children.
A report has been made.
You don't have to give me a name.
I know.
You bugged Lee's car.
You bugged Sarah's car.
Your real target was Hoffman.
Did you bug his car? Yes.
You can tell me where he was last night? If I get the file from Mrs.
Manning.
How much do you think she knows about that deal with Ciaran? She has no idea of it.
Not yet.
Let's put a bottle of champagne on the table.
We'd need somebody who could get inside information.
The obvious person to go to was Ciaran, right? He was head of PR then.
Ciaran worked for you on this deal? It's been a great story, yeah? All that's missing is the big finish.
"I'm a ghost," he said.
"Ghosts have to make amends.
That's why they come back.
" Then he walked to the edge and I've got to go and do my job.
You gonna be all right? No.
Yeah.
I'm just still taking it in.
He said something just before he jumped about why Ciaran might have been killed, why that might lead to who killed Lee.
Nuala's in it, too.
It's just what I was scared of.
Patrick Mulvaney makes one last headline.
All eyes had to be on him when he was alive, and everyone has to be talking about him now that he's dead.
I have to face my sister.
NUALA: That's where we'd go to celebrate signing a new act, making another million.
He'd wave his arm and say, "Look down there.
It's ours.
All of it.
We just have to reach out and take it.
" And the champagne.
I bet he ordered the most expensive one on the menu and that he didn't pay for it.
I'm expecting the bill.
I have a bottle here.
This will be in celebration, by the way, of getting rid of him for good.
Not grieving.
To Patrick Mulvaney, who managed to exit this life the way he lived it.
On his own terms and causing the maximum amount of damage to everyone else.
He told me about the deal, Nuala.
You know which one.
I can't understand why you didn't come straight to me three years ago.
And then what? You worked for them in legal.
You'd have gone straight to the company and refused to let Ciaran in on any deal we were making.
You'd have had to be whiter than the snow, above reproach.
That's who you are, Sarah.
You can't help yourself.
You loved that firm.
That is why you're fighting it so hard, like you've been betrayed or jilted.
You'd have put your job and their good opinion of you before the chance of making so much money you could paper the walls with it.
And if there was a conflict of interest Patrick always said, "Isn't life and death" "a conflict of interest?" He did.
He said it again, to me, just before he jumped.
It must have been so horrible to have seen that.
I won't try to excuse myself.
I had a secret, and I kept it a secret.
And if that got Ciaran killed -- It did.
We have a witness now.
So I don't know how long it's gonna take you to forgive me -- or if you should.
Patrick said that Ciaran drank because he couldn't stand the thought that I earned more money than him, that I was the breadwinner.
Do you think Ciaran had a problem with that? Other people's marriages.
Yeah, but you had a front-row seat at mine.
Did you? I think Ciaran was more complicated than that.
That's what I think.
Most of us are.
Me and the pills -- That wasn't simple.
It took five shrinks and 20,000 euros to sort that out.
We're through with fudging the truth and giving half-answers, Nuala.
Is that what you think was going on between us? You're very strong, Sarah.
You were too strong for Ciaran.
He leant on you.
He relied on you.
And people resent having to do that.
I'm sorry, but there it is.
And when he found a chance to stand on his own feet -- It got him killed.
I didn't know that for sure until you put Lehane at the lock that night.
Then it did go straight back to the firm.
To James Aloysius Darragh Mulvaney.
He wasn't a Patrick at all.
Even that was faked.
Rest in pieces and good riddance.
Do you want to go there? You want to see it? See what all the fuss was about? I can place Hoffman at the cottage the night Kilbride died.
He was meeting a politician named Maurice O'Hanlon and somebody else.
My contact at the Gardaí thinks it's a high-ranking officer in the police.
We don't know yet what they said at the meeting, but with Sarah Manning's file, I can make a pretty good case for conspiracy.
And these jokers? They are gonna go to jail for decades.
And this firm is going to be stripped of everything it owns -- offices, plants, airplanes -- everything.
There won't be any case.
I'm closing you down.
Today.
Do you know how many lawyers that firm has? You're either gonna lie to them and risk federal penalties for perjury or tell the truth about your illicit activities here.
Lee Manning's widow can provide concrete physical evidence that will stand up in court.
The Justice Department will not bring a case against that firm in a million years now.
You will go home and report that no case can be made against Gumbiner-Fischer or its officers or employees.
Take them down and shred them.
Take every scrap of paper out of there, too.
In case your attention wandered, that is where your career is now.
The first time I drove past it, I stood on the brakes.
Location.
Motorway access.
Airport access.
Docks access.
Zoned for industrial or commercial use.
It's got everything.
Wouldn't take a genius to guess how much it could be worth once it was developed.
Call in the bulldozers, flatten those buildings, and you're flying.
I brought Patrick to see it, and he got it at once.
Would've been the deal of a lifetime.
Why go to him? You were divorced.
Who else could I go to? I didn't have the money.
He still had the contacts, and he was a great deal-maker.
He used to say he could sell athlete's-foot powder to a man with two wooden legs.
He wasn't far wrong.
What was this place? I don't know.
It was the location I was interested in.
What was on it wasn't important.
Not to me, anyhow.
I signed a contract saying I'd make half of anything we made reselling it as a finder's fee.
Patrick took over from then on.
And then we hit the roadblock at your firm and we brought Ciaran in.
He'd have been in for half a million.
When we couldn't make the deal happen, of course the line went dead.
Nobody wanted to know Patrick.
Can I help you, girls? We're just wondering what this place is.
It's private property.
You're trespassing.
That's what it is.
Can't you read? Or did you leave your glasses behind? We're on this side of the fence, aren't we? -You being funny? -No.
We're leaving that to you.
Nuala, he's just doing his job.
Do the owners ever come 'round? I wouldn't know who they are.
And if I did, I couldn't tell you.
Are you leaving? You're not a real guard, you know.
You're just playing at it, like a big kid.
Nuala, please.
If I showed you a photograph of somebody, would you be able to tell me if they'd been here? Even if I did, I couldn't tell you.
Not youand not your lippy pal here with the bad attitude.
Have you got the message? Let's go.
I'm Sarah Manning, by the way.
In case you need to know.
I'm sorry.
My big mouth.
The poor, sad little man was just trying to do his job.
A toy guard with a uniform two sizes too big.
His neck didn't even touch the collar.
He took the license-plate number down.
Somewhere in that notebook will be Lee's, too.
That would be how Hoffman knew he was out there investigating him.
Wouldn't that mean that Hoffman will know we were there? I hope so.
I need him to know that I'm still coming after him, that I have cards to play, too.
SARAH: Sarah Manning.
Charles Duquesne.
Would it be possible for you to come and see me before I go back to Montreal? You're leaving us? I regret that my time in your beautiful but sometimes dangerous city is almost at an end.
I'm sorry to hear it.
You must have got used to that borrowed office by now, figured out how to work the desk lamp.
We, um, have found the man who killed your husband.
We all understand how vital this contract is not only to all our operations in Ireland but to the company as a whole.
That is why I can assure everyone at head office that I have personally dealt with all remaining obstacles.
Our friends here in Ireland have assured me that we can rely on their continued support.
We are now ready to break ground at the proposed site for our new plant.
We know Hoffman killed Ciaran because he asked too many questions about that property deal.
He used Lehane to do it.
And your second husband begins to investigate that death, and Hoffman decides that he has to die too -- in Montreal.
Hoffman allows Niklas Esser to learn that Lee will be delivering a file which will destroy him.
Lehane makes sure that Esser knows the name of somebody who can solve this problem for him, somebody who can get the file and leave no witness.
Lee never gets to deliver the file.
DUQUESNE: Then Hoffman realizes that Lehane has to go, too.
So he uses his background as a chemist to make that happen.
No one is left to connect it all back to that first link in the chain, to Hoffman himself.
Who, I regret to say, seems to be untouchable.
SARAH: Untouchable? Okay, he didn't pull the trigger, but he set it all in motion.
He put the pieces in place.
Didn't you say we know who killed Lee now? Detective Byrne provided the information which led to Lee's killer through his family connections in Dublin.
And then Montreal tried to arrest him.
He decided to fight.
The trail ends here.
Okay.
It can't end there.
I won't let it end there.
Is there anything you can do? My mission was only to establish how deeply compromised the minister might be, how far he'd laid himself open to potential blackmail -- blackmail that your husband was involved in.
You accept that now? I've had to.
But that doesn't mean their lives can just be thrown away.
That he -- he sets it up and then goes free.
That is exactly what will happen, and you should be very careful, Mrs.
Manning.
He's a killer.
If he feels you threaten him SARAH: He dropped his guard because he wanted to get back to me.
It's a yes.
So in a way, I got him killed.
You see that bit of the canal there? Where my first husband was murdered? Every time I walk past a canal lock or along the quayside or any bit of water -- and it's hard to avoid in Dublin -- I remember.
Like I remember Lee six or seven times a day when I see him walking towards me or or feel his hand on me.
If you think I'm going to let this go and not get justice for the two of them and for everybody else that he's just got rid of Be careful with this man.
You can expect no assistance from us.
If you go further, you do so on your own.
Haven't I always been? BYRNE: Sarah's ready to give you everything -- hotel receipts, plane reservations, all the evidence you need to prove her husband traveled the world fixing contracts for that company.
Everything you need to make the case.
There is no case.
But you said the -- The FBI is no longer interested in trying to figure out why a man named Lee Manning was found dead in the street in Montreal.
It's dead and buried.
I've been recalled, Detective.
But at least you can give me the evidence you had -- you know, to link it to Dublin, to the firm, to Hoffman.
COYLE: You're not listening.
There is no more evidence.
They put this case in a sack, and they threw it off the end of the pier.
Nobody's going to try to bring it back because it's not just the money that's threatened, it's all of those politicians here and in Washington who feed off of that money.
You put a tracking device on Hoffman's car.
At least you can tell me where that car is now, you know? Then at least I have physical evidence to link him to Deirdre Kilbride's murder.
I know exactly where and when that bug died.
In a scrapyard north of Dublin.
I saw the face of the man who put a bullet in my husband today.
I saw the face of the man who told him to do it.
I keep seeing Hoffman's face because he's behind both of them.
And there's nothing anybody can do about it.
You're stuck.
Duquesne's gone back to Montreal.
The FBI is off the case.
I'm out of ideas.
I think I'm going mad.
I pushed O'Hanlon really hard.
If I keep at it, he might crack.
He might give something up.
He must know that Hoffman killed Deirdre Kilbride.
He's a politician, Emer.
He can easily find a way of wriggling out of facing facts.
Unless you can put Hoffman there.
Unless he cracks, too.
And what are the chances of that? I can go back to Nulty.
With what? He told you not to go back to him until you had proof.
Proof.
Not a guess.
Not a wild swing of the bat.
Evidence that when Hoffman left that cottage, he ran her down and made sure she was dead.
Until then, he's like O'Hanlon.
He can tell himself that there's still a chance it was somebody else.
He must have slipped up somewhere.
There must be something that leads us back to him.
Yeah, but you won't find it.
You know you won't.
He'll have taken care of that, like he's taken care of everything else.
He'll run rings 'round the Gardaí.
I'm not letting it go.
I'm not letting him go.
I promise.
Oh! Is that an official promise? What are those worth? Sorry.
I shouldn't have said that.
He's just smarter than any of us.
BECK: I'm going back to Berlin now.
My work here is completed.
I was investigating a possible national-security threat to a leading German politician who may have exposed himself to blackmail.
Not a case of commercial wrongdoing.
DUQUESNE: And what about Niklas Esser? He gets away? Just like Hoffman.
Well, you know how these things are handled.
A phone call, lunch or dinner, a suggestion that he quietly resign in the next few months to spend some time with his family.
A couple years keeping his head down and then what? He's back in power? It is possible.
That doesn't bother you? Bismarck once said that government is like making sausages -- Even if you like the end result, don't look too closely at the process.
Goodbye, Mr.
Duquesne.
Wait.
You forgot that.
Those cannot be mine.
They are copies of a document, yes, but even copies must carry a serial number.
I didn't see one there.
You decide what to do with them.
Can I write something for the service instead of saying it aloud? You needn't even read it out.
If you want to say it inside, in your heart, you can.
Do you want to say something? Do I even have to be there? You have to be there.
Doesn't he? Let me talk to Eamonn alone, Rose, please.
You don't have to go.
No.
It won't bring him back if I do.
And he wasn't my real dad anyway.
He wasn't your flesh and blood, no.
Remember when you were getting bullied at school because you liked to dance? Remember Lee told you that you have a gift and they were just being jealous? He didn't stop there, did he? He showed you a couple of things to do if they hit you again.
The very next day flattened three of them.
Wiped the floor with them.
I did.
Yeah.
And have they left you alone since? Actually, other kids come to me and ask me to look after them.
Lee wasn't your real dad.
Whatever that means.
But he was so proud of you.
Go do your homework.
But remember -- I'll still love you either way.
Whether you go to the service or not.
So would Lee.
NUALA: Hi, Eamonn.
I know what that place was.
Hey, uh, right there.
Can I help you? Hey.
I need to know if you have a particular license plate in that book of yours.
Uh-huh.
They fired the last guy in this patrol before me just for leaving five minutes early.
I can't risk that.
Right.
Do you like this job? And you have your license to work in the security industry after passing your Basic Guarding Skills FETAC Level Four Award, yeah? Or did you just slip the man hiring you a couple of hundred to fill in the forms for you? I got it fair and square.
So you don't mind me going to headquarters and pulling the files? What do you want? I need you to take a walk over there for five minutes.
Check the fence.
When you do, leave your book on the dashboard.
And that will be that? As far as you're concerned, yeah.
And you let nobody know I was here, okay? I went through Patrick's old files -- the ones I had dumped on me when he went on the run.
There was a lot of junk -- press cuttings, things like that.
I found the business stuff in the end -- the property stuff about that piece of land and the buildings on it.
The freehold is still held by Gumbiner-Fischer.
They bought it from a charity years ago who ran it as the Gates of Mercy.
The Gates of Mercy.
It's a home for pregnant and unwed mothers.
It's been around a hundred or so years.
The gates of mercy and the gates of justice.
What? Barry Lehane used those phrases the night he came to see me.
He was testing me to see how much I knew.
Lee was seen by security at the property on two occasions.
The last was three days before Montreal.
The Private Security Authority says it has a long-term contract to secure the premises.
They're paying thousands a month for a round-the-clock patrol.
All for a place that's falling to the ground -- when they made a song and dance about the problems they had finding a site for their new plant? I found this.
SARAH: When did it close? Twenty-five years ago.
There was a missing-persons inquiry concerning it a few months before that.
I know her.
I'm told Jimmy Nulty is out.
Early retirement.
One of the finest men ever to wear the uniform.
I have no idea what hand you had in that or whether the shenanigans the two of you got up to left him with no choice.
But I'll make sure that your career stops dead, Emer Byrne.
I still have friends in Phoenix Park who can put a nail in your coffin.
Mr.
Nulty got dragged into -- Chief Superintendent Nulty to you.
Chief Superintendent Nulty got dragged into the affairs of the firm I used to work for.
My first husband and my second husband worked there, too.
They were killed because they got too close to something it wants to hide.
He handed the file back to me.
He'll help where he can.
I have his word on that.
It is a major investigation going back several years, and I would value your assistance on it, as I value his.
It all leads back to the Gates of Mercy.
Why did it close down? Was it to do with the missing-persons case you were working just before? The Gates of Mercy? BYRNE: You were there.
That case was months before it shut up shop.
One of the staff had left it one night and she never came back.
You never found her? No.
I don't want to continue this.
You may have forced Jimmy Nulty to work with you, but not me.
I can make this official.
I am in charge of a wide-ranging inquiry into several suspected murders committed over a number of years with an apparent connection to that place -- and now, potentially, one of your unsolved cases.
You can answer now or be required to answer.
Say that again.
You know what I said, what it means.
Don't make me go there, please.
I took you under my wing when you came into the guards.
Perhaps I was taught too well.
It was a routine missing-persons case.
It meant that I had to check on her place of work.
I did.
There was no hint there was anything wrong there.
Yeah, but it closed down overnight months afterwards.
I wouldn't know about that.
It was a place for women who nobody else would take in.
It looked after the outcasts and their children, and it didn't judge them -- in a country where that judgment came a little too easy for a woman who'd made a slip.
It did a great job.
First-class people.
First-class facilities.
A model for what that kind of place should be.
Did the name of Gumbiner-Fischer ever come up? No.
You're sure? I'm not in the witness box, and as far as I know, you're not a practicing lawyer.
They bought the land.
They have the freehold.
There's a 24-hour guard on the place still.
What are they hiding? Were you not listening? Nobody had anything to hide.
There were decent people there as well as rogues.
People who spent their lives caring, trying to build things up, not knocking them down.
I'm leaving now, unless you have means of keeping me here.
I've told you all I know.
I won't forget this, Emer Byrne.
I didn't want to do it this way.
I'm going to see my friend Jimmy Nulty now.
A good man.
Whatever you think he did, he didn't deserve to end his career this way.
You went against the code.
Well, at least it's still an open missing-persons inquiry.
That might just be enough to get us over the fence, see what they're hiding in there.
DR.
HOFFMAN: I shall take a small vacation before the funeral service for Ms.
Kilbride.
Please arrange for my plane to be serviced and ready, and alert the staff at the villa of my arrival.
WOMAN: Dr.
Hoffman, Sarah Manning is here.
What should I tell her? Mrs.
Manning.
An unexpected pleasure.
You will not use my children as a weapon against me.
Whatever fight you have with me, they'll be kept out of it.
I have no idea what you're talking about.
This is a copy of the report made by the German Federal Institute for Drugs and Medical Devices.
It's been kept under wraps for years.
It's a little bit like the information you used Lee to deliver to swing contracts your way.
This time it's about you.
Put together by other people who are used to looking into secrets.
If you are recording this conversation, I still insist that your allegations are baseless and sincerely plead with you to get professional help.
You started out as a research chemist but very soon showed where your real talents were -- management.
You were good at fixing things.
When you couldn't make a deal happen that would keep both sides happy, you were the hatchet man, too.
Twenty-five years ago, they flew you to Ireland.
There was a problem.
It was gonna take a corporate star like you to sort it out.
A few years previously, they had a new drug in the pipeline for cancer in children.
It needed to run clinical trials in the real world, outside the laboratory.
It looked for somewhere the regulatory regime was a little loose.
What would be ideal would be to have people to experiment on where there wouldn't be a song and dance if too many infants, babies, young children died.
At the Gates of Mercy Home, say.
Those trials were conducted with the approval of the Irish authorities.
Nobody should have been asked to take part without having the risks explained and given a chance to back out.
That's what went wrong there.
It's why you took one look and had the company buy the place, then close it down and scatter all the staff who might know something about it, like how many young children died.
Otherwise a lot of people's careers would have been destroyed.
They might even have gone to jail.
The company might not have survived.
This was 25 years ago.
What you call a report is a series of unsupported allegations.
You still own the property.
And it's guarded 24 hours a day.
I'm about to find out what you're hiding there.
It must have been something worth killing for.
I'm flying to Spain shortly.
A few days' vacation.
When I come back, I will resign and become a scientist again.
I sincerely believe that I still have things to offer as a medical scientist.
I admit nothing, of course, but I would return from Spain in a different capacity.
For the rest of my days here, I would make amends for any mistakes I've made, any distress I've caused.
Distress? I wanted justice.
At least that place can give me the answers I need.
Think what you may be about to do.
The consequences for hundreds, maybe thousands of children and their parents.
Don't jeopardize the future.
You're a brilliant man.
I believe you could do what you say.
The greater good -- I get it.
It's something you could ask a saint to go along with.
I'm not a saint.
BYRNE: Sarah! You okay? There's kitchens and laundry.
That must have been where the dormitories were.
Ghosts.
What are we looking for, exactly? Even with this, I wish I knew.
Years of experiments.
Dozens of trials.
Dead end after dead end.
But they kept trying.
Found someone else to allow their child to be used.
Told them how much good would come from it ortold them nothing at all.
But it's just a file.
Nothing to back it up.
Nothing to say it really happened.
Allegations without facts.
Guesses without proof.
What's that? There was no main drainage.
Must be the septic tank.
BYRNE: This is what we have so far.
There's gonna be more.
A lot more.
Two dozen bodies, aged a few days to five or six years.
It's gonna be impossible to determine the exact cause of death or give them names.
An adult in her early to mid-20s.
SARAH: Detective Heffernan's missing person.
Who saw something she shouldn't, was gonna make a fuss, blow the whistle, derail the fix that Hoffman had spent so much time and money putting in.
SARAH: Which makes her the first person he killed.
And after her, he had to keep on killing.
Ciaran.
Lee.
Lehane.
Kilbride.
Then me? WOMAN: Gardaí in Dublin continue to search the site of a derelict property, formerly the Gates of Mercy Home for unmarried mothers and their children.
The Garda press office says it will issue a formal statement later today.
Some wreckage from the small private jet registered and piloted by the chief executive of one of Ireland's leading pharmaceutical companies was found in the waters off Wexford today.
Air, sea, and shore searches coordinated by the Irish Coast Guard are continuing for the missing pilot, Hans Werner Hoffman from Gumbiner-Fischer.
The plane was last seen on radar some six hours ago, and it is not yet clear if he was traveling alone.
In another statement, the company announced a wide-ranging review into the findings at the site of the Gates of Mercy Home but emphasized that these events occurred almost three decades ago and involved personnel who were no longer affiliated with Gumbiner-Fisher.
They have pledged full cooperation with any inquiry.
The company also confirmed today that it will be completing the multimillion-euro plant outside Dublin.
This is great news for every Irishman and every Irishwoman, especially for those of us with our country's best interests at heart.
It guarantees a long-term future with good schools for our kids and good jobs waiting for them at the end.
The car's here.
We ready? Okay.
Go on.
The alarm.
I'm not living like that anymore.
Afraid of my own shadow.
I got into this to get one question answered.
Who killed Lee? I got most of the answer.
Not all of it.
Maybe I have to settle for what I have becauseI need to get on with my life now.
I still don't know who that is.
The man who shared my bed.
Where he was from.
Whether one day he would've opened up to me, told me everything he felt he had to keep back.
Whether he was a good man or a crook.
Or a crook and a good man.
Maybe you have to let it go, Sarah, find a way to do that.
Do I have a choice? Remember I asked you to take care of Rose and Eamonn while we went away for the weekend? I do.
I got my dates wrong.
I think -- I'm not sure It's early days, but Oh, my God.
Sarah, are you really? Yes.
Oh, come here.
Would have been nice to have had the chance to tell him.