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Series 5: 2. Extortion?

Police in Edinburgh receive a call from a university reporting that the family of 19-year-old international student Xiaoqiang have been unable to reach him for the past five days and are becoming increasingly worried. A call to Xiaoqiang’s mother in China soon reveals why she is so worried - they are a wealthy family, and Xiaoqiang has been asking her for unusually large sums of money.\n\nAs soon as Xiaoqiang is made high risk, police trace his phone to a location in Durham. Further enquiries suggest he is in a hotel, and officers from Durham Police are sent to check, quickly locating Xiaoqiang in a hotel room. Xiaoqiang tells them that he is fine, and that he just wants some peace from his ‘controlling’ mother. He doesn’t appear to be at risk, and as he is an adult, police can declare him safe without needing to notify his family of his whereabouts.\n\nEdinburgh Police initially believe that to be the end of the story, but ten days later, they are alerted that Xiaoqiang’s family have once again reported him missing. This time, his mother has come in person to the police station, along with his UK-based cousin Xin Yu and a translator. Xiaoqiang has not been answering calls, but this morning his mother received an alarming video clip from him in which he appears to be crying, with his bloodied head in a bandage and describing being taken to a warehouse and beaten. He pleads with his mother to transfer money or the people who are threatening him ‘will cut off his fingers’. While Xiaoqiang’s mother is consumed with fear for his safety, police urgently need to get to the bottom of the video.\n\nXiaoqiang’s mother is convinced that he is being extorted, but when Chief Inspector Hamilton analyses the video, he spots that it has been filmed in the same hotel room that he was in during the previous missing case. Police urgently need to find Xiaoqiang to determine what is really happening, and whether he is at serious risk of harm. A team from Durham races to the hotel, but the mystery only deepens when they find the hotel room empty.\n\nIn Glasgow, another mother is worried that her son may be in danger. Twenty-year-old Daniel has failed to return after leaving to go hiking in the mountains, and it is now almost night-time. Beyond knowing that he was planning to drive for around an hour to get to an unknown location with the word Ben in its name, Daniel's mother has no idea where he went. At Cathcart Police Station, Sergeant Emma Waterston dispatches teams to travel towards the mountains north of Glasgow, but with so few details of where Daniel has headed, they are unable to focus the search. Police decide to try and focus on finding Daniel’s car as a way of pinpointing which mountain he may be on. His distressed mother tells officers at her house that this is the first time he has not been contactable by phone, and she also believes that he is not well prepared for the mountains, putting\nadded pressure on police to find him before the weather worsens overnight.\n\nConcerns grow when the 999 control room sends through a call that may have come from Daniel, stating only that he is lost before cutting out. It now seems likely that Daniel is still on the mountain without a functioning phone and no light to guide him. Local specialist Sergeant Nikki Collison is brought in from Stirling to help direct the search, but even with data from Daniel’s phone now helping to narrow down the location, it still leaves a 75-mile area to search. It is only when Daniel’s car is finally located and new information comes to light that officers can mount a major search operation. But just as a helicopter lifts off to scour the mountain for signs of life, bad weather rolls in and the search is suspended. Whatever has happened to Daniel, it will be dawn before the operation can resume.

Source: BBC 1