The Fall

Ned Callan:
[fishing for a news story] So why bring someone in from the outside? That looks remarkably like a vote of no confidence in the PSNI and its ability to run an internal murder investigative review, don't you think? What have you found so far? Staggering levels of incompetence?

Stella Gibson:
Mister Callan, no one knows better than me how important the media is as an investigative resource. But really and truly, you should f*** off.

Stella Gibson:
Now.

[first lines]

Sarah Kay:
You don't need his approval, you just want it.

Kevin McSwain:
What's the difference?

Sarah Kay:
Well, most of what we call "needs" are desires. We need air to breathe, water, warmth, food to eat.

Kevin McSwain:
Speaking of which... [reaching for menu]

Sarah Kay:
But the rest - love, approval, recognition, praise, whatever - they're desires.

Kevin McSwain:
So, what's sex? Is that a need or a desire?

Sarah Kay:
Hmm... Well, both if you're doing it right! [big smile]

Sally Ann Spector:
[about their daughter] I just wish I knew what was going on in her mind when she's like that.

Paul Spector:
No-one knows what's going on in someone else's mind. And life would be intolerable if we did.

Stella Gibson:
Did I invite you to sit down? I don't think so.

Ned Callan:
So, call the police.

[last lines]

Danielle Ferrington:
This is a message for Sarah Kay. Sarah, this is PC Dani Ferrington. I'm calling from outside your house. If you're there, it is the police at the door. I was hoping to speak with you to follow up on the incident that occurred on Friday. Please, ring the number I gave you when you get this message.

Danielle Ferrington:
[leaving with her partner] Perhaps she *did* go stay with her sister.

Stella Gibson:
[Speaking privately to Jim Burns] Make me SIO. I have the rank. I have the experience. I'm here and I could be made available.

[first lines]

James Olson:
DS James Olson. Just after 21:50 hours, a car was stopped in the vicinity of the Falls Road because it was being driven erratically. A search revealed two concealed firearms and a quantity of ammunition. I've reason to believe this man, Terry McInturff, was involved in the murder of Michael Lockwood in the Shankill area earlier this evening.

Police Tech:
[demanding his gum] Open your mouth.

Terry McInturff:
F*** you.

James Olson:
Empty your mouth.

Terry McInturff:
F*** you.

James Olson:
[grabbing him roughly] Spit it out! Spit it out!

Attorney:
After advice, my client will not be answering any questions.

Terry McInturff:
[give a tough mocking stare]

James Olson:
Don't give me that look, Terry. That bullshit only works on intelligent people.

Paul Spector:
I'm sorry I hurt you. What can I do to make it up to you?

Katie Benedetto:
Kiss it better.

Stella Gibson:
A woman, I forget who, once asked a male friend why men felt threatened by women. He replied that they were afraid that women might laugh at them. When she asked a group of women why women felt threatened by men. they said, We're afraid they might kill us.

Stella Gibson:
He might fascinate you. I despise him with every fiber of my being.

Katie Benedetto:
[about hotel room pictures] Only someone with a narrow mind would call that aberrant.

Jim Burns:
He's not a human being, he's a monster.

Stella Gibson:
Stop, Jim. Please, just stop.

Jim Burns:
What?

Stella Gibson:
You can see the world in that way if you want, you know it makes no sense to me. Men like Spector are all too human, too understandable. He's not a monster, he's just a man.

Jim Burns:
I'm a man. I hope to God I'm nothing like him.

Stella Gibson:
No, you're not. But you still came to my hotel room uninvited and mounted some kind of drunken attack on me.

Stella Gibson:
Were your fantasies always sexual in nature?

Paul Spector:
Aren't everyone's?

Paul Spector:
You're a very self-aware person, Stella. You spend a lot of time observing yourself. You have sex in the head. I doubt you've ever fully given yourself to anyone. I doubt you ever truly lose yourself.

Stella Gibson:
And you have?

Paul Spector:
The thoughts, the feelings that I experience are way beyond anything that you could call fantasies. Sounds and colours are more vivid, odours more intense. My skin becomes sensitive to even the slightest of pressure. The outside world means nothing, only the interior world is real. It is utterly compelling, compulsive. Nothing can pull you back from the edge. Not laws or threats of punishment, morality, religion, fear of death. All of those things are as meaningless as the life that you're about to extinguish.

Paul Spector:
Once a man has achieved contempt for himself, he achieves contempt for all man-made laws and moralities and is truly free to do as he wills.

Stella Gibson:
You're under arrest, you're going to prison. In what sense are you free?

Paul Spector:
I live at a level of intensity unknown to you and others of your type. You will never know the almost God-like power that I feel when that last bit of breath leaves a body. That feeling of complete possession.

Stella Gibson:
Yes, you felt empowered. Invincible even. But you're under arrest. Maybe you did possess your victims, but you couldn't keep them, and now they're gone and you're alone.

Paul Spector:
You couldn't call it a fight. It was more of a mismatch. He came into the room, I was strangling his sister. Armed with a heavy piece of wood the best he could muster was a blow across the back. What kind of bourgeois nonsense, the influence of parents, teachers, the church, police officers, contrives to make you incapable of crushing another man's skull, even to save your sister! In that moment, his squeamishness, whatever the f***, in that moment, he sealed his fate, and he should have sealed hers. A miserable worm bleating, "Annie? Annie?" He deserved to die choking in a pool of his own blood. Piece of sh*t!

Paul Spector:
Don't pretend that you care about him. You listed the victims to me on the phone. "For Fiona Gallagher, Alice Monroe, Sarah Kay," I don't let you. No mention of Joe. What's one more man to you, more or less? Let men perish. Who gives a f***?

Paul Spector:
[in visitors room] Watching you grow up has been the best thing that ever happened to me. I'm sorry for all the times that you needed a cuddle and I wasn't there. I'm sorry that the projects in my life took up so much time. I should have cherished every moment with you. I've heard you say that you want to be a doctor, and a pizza maker, and a pilot, and a princess when you grow up. I just hope that one day, despite everything, that you can be happy.

Olivia Spector:
When are you coming home?

Paul Spector:
Not for a while. I've got work to do here.

Olivia Spector:
Do you work for her? [Gibson]

Paul Spector:
Sort of.

Stella Gibson:
And we have work to do. It's time for Olivia to go.

Paul Spector:
[hugging] I love you, little one.

Paul Spector:
I love you best in the whole wide world, Daddy.

Stella Gibson:
She's chilled, Ged, but she's not stone-cold. [Rose coughs] Jesus Christ, she's alive!

Stella Gibson:
[into the radio] She's alive.

Paul Spector:
Unexpected.

[last lines]

Stella Gibson:
We need an ambulance! Sh*t! Don't move, stay still. I need something to tamp the blood! [helicopter whirrs overhead] We need help! Can nothing land?

Ged Green:
We've got three men down here. We need urgent medical backup!

Helicopter Pilot:
I can't land. The trees are too dense. Repeat. I cannot land. Jesus Christ. The trees are too dense.

Ged Green:
Get a medic up here now! Go, go, go, go, go!

Stella Gibson:
[pressing Spector's wound] Oh Oh, we're losing him! We're losing him!

Stella Gibson:
[Speaking to her investigative team] He clearly has a victim type. They are not victims of chance. They are victims of choice. They don't know him but he knows them.

Stella Gibson:
What if he kills a prostitute next? Or a woman walking home drunk? Late at night in a short skirt? Will they be in some way less innocent therefore less deserving? Culpable. The media loves to divide women into virgins or vamps, angels or whores. Let's not encourage them.

Stella Gibson:
That's what really bothers you isn't it? The one-night stand? Man f***s woman. Subject man, verb f***s, object woman. That's okay. Woman f***s man. Woman subject, man object. That's not so comfortable for you is it?

[first lines]

Jim Burns:
So who are you thinking of for deputy SIOs?

Stella Gibson:
I'm not exactly spoiled for choice.

Jim Burns:
Just answer.

Stella Gibson:
Brink. And McElroy.

Jim Burns:
McElroy? Good. That's good.

Jim Burns:
[mobile rings] Burns. We'll be right there.

Jim Burns:
[to Gibson] There's been a fatal shooting. A police officer. We should get you issued with a firearm. Book yourself in at the range.

Stella Gibson:
I don't have time.

Jim Burns:
This is Belfast. Make time.

Garrett Brink:
I've been on to HQ. We have a list of operational names.

Garrett Brink:
Eden.

Stella Gibson:
A place where the woman gets the blame.

Garrett Brink:
Top Hat.

Stella Gibson:
Too posh.

Garrett Brink:
Alamo.

Stella Gibson:
Too Texan.

Garrett Brink:
Musicman.

Stella Gibson:
Too male.

Garrett Brink:
Genesis.

Stella Gibson:
My least favorite band. Well, aside from U2.

Jerry McElroy:
Hey, steady on.

Garrett Brink:
Ashdown?

Stella Gibson:
Too foresty.

Garrett Brink:
What?

Stella Gibson:
Reminds me of shallow graves. Seriously, gentlemen...

Stella Gibson:
[morning briefing] Think of it as an addiction. There's a law of diminishing returns. The serialist, like the heroin addict, is always seeking that elusive first high, and he's doomed to fail. That's why the cooling off periods get shorter, and the crimes become more elaborate. And he will carry on feeding that killing habit. unless we stop him.

Stella Gibson:
[morning briefing] There is only one of him. You'd think that gives us the advantage. But it doesn't. He moves around on his own, in darkness. And we operate under the glare of media lights. Now let's make sure that we don't let anything slip through the cracks. The Devil, quite literally, ladies and gentlemen. is in the detail. Detail, detail, and detail again.

Angelica:
I don't think I'll ever be able to accept what's happened.

Paul Spector:
You don't have to. I don't subscribe to that model of grief. I don't see bereavement as ever being resolved or accepted. There is no closure, no recovery.

James Tyler:
[to Paul] You stay away from my wife. Or I'll f***ing kill you. And your wife. And your kids.

[last lines]

Stella Gibson:
It's all part of the fantasy. The fantasy that sustains him between killings. It's about power, and control. And the thrill. It thrills him to stalk these women. To break into their houses, to take their underwear. It's about intimacy. What could be more intimate than. squeezing the life from another human being? Having their dead body at your disposal.

Stella Gibson:
We've all seen more degrading crime scenes. Bodies with objects left inside them. This is different. It's like an art form to him. I'm certain he takes photographs. After they're dead. They're playthings to him. He treats them like objects. He paints their nails. He uses them like dolls. He's creating his own pornography.

Jim Burns:
Why are women emotionally and spiritually so much stronger than men?

Stella Gibson:
Because the basic human form is female. Maleness is... a kind of birth defect.

Paul Spector:
Being a serial murderer is a form of slow suicide, deeply self-destructive.

Michael Day:
[walks up to her table] I'm Michael Day, Bacon and Day Solicitors.

Reed Smith:
How lovely for you.

Michael Day:
What do you do?

Reed Smith:
I'm a pathologist. from the Ancient Greek "pathos", meaning disease, and "logos", meaning a treatise. I study disease, death being the final disease.

Jim Burns:
Stella.

Stella Gibson:
You look at me like you looked at that bottle of Scotch, a mixture of fear and anger. I don't like it.

[last lines]

Paul Spector:
[Stella reading from book left in her bedroom] Oh, Stella, how revealing. How exposing. It's all in these pages. Sweet little Stella missing her daddy, lost and alone. Sexy Stella, expressing her deepest, darkest desires. Stroppy Stella, angry and misunderstood, lashing out against the world of men. Oh, Stella Gibson, how well I know you now.

Jim Burns:
[Speaking privately to Stella Gibson] Do you have any idea of the effect you have on men?

Rose Stagg:
I know it seems crazy, being in bed with a guy when you don't know anything about him. Just his first name. I learnt my lesson.

Stella Gibson:
My first degree was in Anthropology.

Danielle Ferrington:
You're *first* degree?

Stella Gibson:
Mmm. I have hundreds.

Paul Spector:
Put on a headscarf and some dark glasses. You'll look like Sophia Loren.

Liz Tyler:
Who's she?

Stella Gibson:
What will you tell your daughters in the future? About how to stay safe?

Reed Smith:
Pretty much what I tell them now. Don't talk to strange men.

Stella Gibson:
Strange men?

Reed Smith:
Any man.

[last lines]

Stella Gibson:
And you haven't seen him since?

Vicky Olsen:
No.

Stella Gibson:
Even glimpsed him, about town?

Vicky Olsen:
No.

Stella Gibson:
And you know of him as Peter? Anything else?

Vicky Olsen:
I know it seems crazy - being in bed with a guy when you don't know anything about him. Just his first name. I learnt my lesson.

Danielle Ferrington:
[interrupting] You're wanted, ma'am. It's urgent.

Paul Spector:
[counseling Annie] We all know people who live too much in the past. Too much history, too much remembering, can ultimately destroy the present. and the future.

Paul Spector:
As Camus says: Life is the sum of all your choices. Choose your next move carefully, Katie.

[last lines]

Stella Gibson:
Why are you calling me?

Paul Spector:
Because I'm looking up at the sky. Stella, shining star. It's a beautiful night - made me think of you.

Stella Gibson:
What have you done with Rose?

Paul Spector:
Who?

Stella Gibson:
Rose Stagg. Rose McGill. You must want me to know that you have her, or why would you be using her phone? You wrote that you feel protective towards children. Rose has two. A boy of 15 months, and a girl of six. Her daughter particularly is missing her. What are you going to do?

Paul Spector:
Stella, I don't know what's going to happen to me, to you, to anyone else in this world. All I know is, no one can outwit death.

Stella Gibson:
Peter? Peter?

Paul Spector:
[muffled screaming from the trunk as he gets in and drives away]

[first lines]

Stella Gibson:
Rick, I need a new laptop.

Rick Turner:
Where's yours?

Stella Gibson:
In an evidence bag.

Rick Turner:
What?

Stella Gibson:
Long story.

Stella Gibson:
Modern life is such an unholy mix of voyeurism and exhibitionism. People perpetually broadcasting their internal and external selves.

Stella Gibson:
We all have physical, emotional needs that can only be met by interaction with another person. The trick is to ask someone appropriate to meet them.

Olivia Spector:
Why can't you marry your daddy?

Sally Ann Spector:
Do you mean why can't little girls marry their daddies?

Olivia Spector:
Yes.

Sally Ann Spector:
Do you want to marry Daddy?

Olivia Spector:
Can I?

Sally Ann Spector:
He's already married. To me. He's taken.

Olivia Spector:
But if you don't want him?

Sally Ann Spector:
Someday when you're older like Mummy you can marry a nice man like Daddy.

Stella Gibson:
Always look up at a crime scene.

Gail McNally:
[after questioning violent Tyler] You were treating me like a damsel in distress! I don't need protection, I can look after myself.

Rick Turner:
What, with your handbag?

Gail McNally:
Why don't you come join the rest of us in the 21st century? I knuckle in.

Rick Turner:
It's what I do with any partner.

Gail McNally:
Yeah? Well, in future knuckle out.

Stella Gibson:
Do you know a detective called Tom Anderson?

Matt Eastwood:
Yeah. Detective Sergeant West Belfast. Young, charismatic. Good looking. [knowing grin]

Stella Gibson:
I met him at a crime scene. He was wearing a full forensic mask.

Katie Benedetto:
I think about you all the time, every minute of every day.

Paul Spector:
Is it painful?

Katie Benedetto:
Yes.

Paul Spector:
Good.

Katie Benedetto:
Why good?

Paul Spector:
Because other people's pain gives me pleasure.

Katie Benedetto:
Even mine?

Paul Spector:
Especially yours.

Paul Spector:
It's not about sex. It's about deciding on the essential nature of the world. Is the world a place of pain and suffering, of grief and despair, or is it a place full of joy, all sweetness and light?

Katie Benedetto:
I don't know, I...

Paul Spector:
Oh, I think you do. Your father was decapitated in a motorcycle accident. Or have you forgotten?

Katie Benedetto:
No, I haven't forgotten.

[last lines]

Reed Smith:
What on Earth are you doing?

Stella Gibson:
[standing by morgue body] Wondering where Rose is.

[first lines]

Control:
[over radio] Control, Xray-1. Update.

Xray 1:
From Xray-1. No movement. Nothing to report.

Stella Gibson:
No sign of any builders, plumbers at the house?

Control:
No ma'am. The target appears to be playing loud music.

[last lines]

Gail McNally:
[entering Spector's jail cell] I'm DC Gail McNally. Paul Spector, I'm further arresting you for the murder of Joseph Brawley and the attempted murder of Ann Brawley. You do not have to say anything but it may harm your defense if you do not mention when questioned, something you later rely on in court. Anything you do say may be given in evidence. Do you understand?

Reed Smith:
The older I get the more I have two selves, the medical self that's confronted every day with the biological basis for existence - blood, internal organs, corpses. And then I have another self that bathes my kids, puts them to bed, kisses their little cuts and bruises better. Examining dead bodies is one thing; living victims is something else.

Stella Gibson:
There's a name for it. It's called doubling. I do the same. So does the killer.

Paul Spector:
Watch me walk away.

Stella Gibson:
It's never over for someone like you. It won't be over until I stop you.

[first lines]

Stella Gibson:
Are paramedics inside?

Cop:
Yes, Ma'am.

Stella Gibson:
We're going to need human scent dogs.

Ian Kay:
The more we make the wrong decisions, the more our hearts harden. The more we make the right decisions, the more our heart softens, comes alive.

Sally Ann Spector:
[to Paul] When you first meet someone, when you first get to know them, there comes a time when you get to know their friends and their family and you get to learn all about them through those others, through their closest relationships. Their mother, father, brothers, sisters With you, there's nothing.

Mary McCurdy:
If he has children, do you think he loves them? Do you think he *can* love?

Stella Gibson:
Most human emotions exist on a kind of continuum. People talk about lack of empathy, but we all have limits to our empathy. Some people are profoundly moved by children starving on the other side of the world, and some people it barely touches. For them, things need to literally be closer to home. I'm sure he is way out there on the sex continuum, but we all know men who have fantasized about having a woman completely under their control, or initiating a young girl into sex.

Mary McCurdy:
Yes, but most don't act on those fantasies. But he does. Why?

Stella Gibson:
Well, maybe, maybe it's not that he's devoid of emotion at all. Maybe it's the reverse. Isn't it emotion that the sexual sadist feeds off - blind panic, abject terror? I think he feels their pain acutely. It's just that he gets pleasure from it.

Paul Spector:
[on the phone] We're very alike, you and me.

Stella Gibson:
Oh, I don't think so.

Paul Spector:
We're both driven by will to power, a desire to control everything and everyone. Obsessive, ruthless, living and breathing moral relativism. It's just you're bound by conventional notions of what's right and wrong and I'm free.

Stella Gibson:
How are you free? You're a slave to your desires. You have no control at all. You're weak. Impotent. You think you're some kind of artist. But you're not.

Paul Spector:
Art is a lie. Art gives the chaos of the world an order that doesn't exist.

Stella Gibson:
[to Paul] It's never over for someone like you. It won't be over until I stop you.

[last lines]

Stella Gibson:
[replaying phone call] You f***ed up and we're on to you.

Paul Spector:
If you're on to me, you'll come for me. You have no idea who I am.

Nurse:
Ma'am, Annie Brawley has regained consciousness.

[first lines]

Stella Gibson:
Let's try something different. If you were on the other side of your bedroom, standing by the window, what would you have seen?

Annie Brawley:
Me on the bed. Him behind me. I was on my side at first. Tied up.

Stella Gibson:
What else? Can you see him clearly?

Annie Brawley:
No.

Stella Gibson:
It's okay. Let's take a step back.

Ged Green:
[menacingly to Gibson] What's the difference between James Olsen and a black cab? A black cab can take five in the back.

Stella Gibson:
Remember it's an addiction. He takes his fantasies and he turns them into reality. It makes him feel superior to the rest of us mere mortals. As such, in his own mind, he feels he has the right to decide who lives and who dies. In order to do the terrible things that he does, the killer dehumanizes his victims. Let's do the opposite. Let's keep them alive. For us, for their families, friends, work colleagues. For the public. Let's keep them alive until this man is caught.

Katie Benedetto:
Why are you staring at her?

Paul Spector:
I'm not.

Katie Benedetto:
She's not your type.

Paul Spector:
I don't have a type.

Katie Benedetto:
Liar.

Little Girl:
[in her dark hallway] Are you a friend of Mummy's or Daddy's?

Paul Spector:
[whispering] Your mummy.

Little Girl:
What's your name?

Paul Spector:
Peter. Peter Piper. Peter Piper picked a peck of pickled peppers. A peck of pickled peppers Peter Piper picked. If Peter Piper picked a peck of pickled peppers where's the peck of pickled peppers that Peter Piper picked? It's called a tongue twister. You try it.

[last lines]

Paul Spector:
[restraining her from behind] I want you to come with me now. I want to talk to you. I don't want to have to hurt you, Rose. I don't want to have to hurt your beautiful family. But I will. I will if you scream or cry out when I release you. Do you understand? Okay. One, two, three.

Rose Stagg:
Peter?