'Unforgotten' Season 3 Finale Recap: The Long Conclusion

The truth comes out in the Hayley Reid case in Unforgotten's Season 3 finale, but it turns out her death was always the tip of a much larger iceberg.

D.Supt Andrews: "This can't end like the Walker case."

Last week's episode ended with the arrest of Tim Finch, and the discovery of a box in his cellar that held a scrunchie, a cross necklace and a pair of white knickers. As Khan points out, these are concerning, as one would assume they were trophies. Finch has a slightly bizarre explantion for them. He claims to have bought the first two at a flea market, which sounds reasonable. The knickers are included among them because he claims his girls used underwear to tie their hair back as little girls as part of a running family joke. It's such a weird excuse it almost holds water. Who in heaven's name would come up with it otherwise?

He might be telling the truth. The Reid family concurs these were not Hayley's things. She was an atheist, first off, and Jess says she was all about bright colored everything, including her underthings. Mum put the nail in it though, Hayley bobbed her hair only a week or three before the New Year. No scrunchie.

When the DNA test comes back confirming these were not Hayley's things, it seems like Finch is in the clear...except they did come back as a match. They match a victim from an entirely different unsolved case, a 14-year-old girl, Alison Baldwin, who went missing in 1997. Her body was found having been raped, strangled, and sans knickers, after a kidnapping while walking through a wooded area, not unlike where Hayley was believed to be murdered. Alison's mother positively identifies all three items as belonging to her daughter.