'Deadwater Fell' Episode 3 sees Tom outed as a grade A a**hole, but did he really murder his family?
In 'Deadwater Fell' Episode 3, we see how Tom Kendrick (David Tennant) treats his wife Kate Kendrick (Anna Madeley) horribly and mentally abuses her by repeatedly cheating on her with her best friends.
The episode begins with Tom being arrested after a witness states that he saw Tom dragging his daughter Emma back into his house despite her being scared and the arrest had gone through flawlessly due to Tom's friend Steve Campbell (Matthew McNulty), who had in fact saved him from the fire. Steve recently learned from his partner Jess Milner (Cush Jumbo) that she had had sex with Tom and one of the main reasons Tom became a suspect was due to her statement about how he had been dominant during the act.
That in combination with the witness helped Steve put Tom in his place for sleeping with Jess, but what he hadn't expected was that the witness had actually seen Kate drag her daughter back and not Tom. When the witness tries to recant his statement, Steve forces the witness to keep his mouth shut. Of course, the witness gets scared and he ends up recanting the statement anyway because of which Tom has been released, but it is in this time that we learn the true face of Tom in the form of flashes from the past.
For instance, whenever Kate seems to get close to someone other than him and forms a bond as she did in the past with Sasha or with Jess, his first thought is to ruin it. It is clear that he wants Kate to have no one to confide in and why we feel that he is a Grade-A a**hole is because of the way he reveals the truth to Kate. One night, right after he has sex with Kate, he asks her if she orgasmed, and when she says she is tired he reveals, "Jess did, when I f**ked her." So before her death, Kate knew that Jess had cheated. Then there are little things that he does, like the way he speaks to her in front of his mother as if Kate were a slave who must obey his orders, which proves that he was abusing his wife mentally.
While Steve is removed from the investigation for witness tampering, before that, however, he had had a chance to question Tom. At this time, he managed to not only rattle Tom but also figure out various discrepancies in Tom's statements. For instance, why were all the family members injected with insulin? A high amount of insulin when injected would be dangerous and this seems to have been the case with the Kendrick family. Since Tom is a doctor, he had access to insulin and this only furthers suspicions about Tom.
Beyond all of his abusive methods, it is also revealed that Tom also has acquired a huge amount of debt. Is this a case of insurance fraud where Tom hopes to collect on the insurance money and clear his debt? Because at this point that seems to be a plausible reason. If not, all we are left with is to accept that Kate really did kill her family.
The episode also reveals how Steve is dealing with guilt. After Kate met with an accident with her children on board and Jess, Kate had requested him to not inform Tom and she uses an extreme excuse. She tells him that if Tom were to know, he would definitely kill her this time. Steve believes that the accident occurred because she mixed alcohol with her prescription for depression and he believes that Tom must be informed. However, because he is unaware of how Tom treats his wife within the four walls of his home, he doesn't take Kate seriously.
For Kate and her kids to have died right after she had said something like this, Steve believes that he has somehow played a part in her and her daughters' death. For now, Tom seems a lot more capable of killing his family than Kate but then nothing is certain when it comes to the Kendrick family.
New episodes of 'Deadwater Fell' will air on Mondays on Acorn TV.
