Ah Detective Chief Superindendant Patricia Carmichael, head of AC-3, makes an pantomime villain-esque entrance like no-one else on Line Of Duty (and on a TV show lhat’s teeming with baddies, that really is saying something). BUT IS SHE BENT?
Unlike some of the other recurring characters in season six, we only met Carmichael in season five, when she was bought in to oversee AC-12’s operation, when Hastings himself became implicated and was deemed unable to lead the operation.
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She became an instant fan favourite with her deadpan one liners, refusal to make friends and an icy cold demeanour that could either be the mark of a rules obsessed senior officer who’s made it to the top by dotting every I and crossing every T, or the behaviour of a TOTALLY BENT senior officer who goes by the name of H.
Well, now Carmichael is back in charge of AC-12, with Hasting’s forced retirement just around the corner, and fans are increasingly convinced that she’s either H, or at the very least working for the OCG.
First up, before his murder, Jimmy Lakewell told Steve Arnott to look beyond the race claims in the case of Lawrence Christopher, a racist murder that was poorly investigated by the police and appeared to be one of the cases Gail Vella was investigating.
Twitter users quickly realised that if you rearranged RACE CLAIMS and added a H, you get Carmichael. Maybe not the most compelling clue in itself, but it does seem, like QUITE the coincidence - especially when you consider how specific Lakewell was about the phrase he used. However, let’s not dismiss the possibility that this could be a Jed Mercurio red herring designed to throw us off the scent.
But her behaviour in episode of six of Line Of Duty makes it look increasingly likely that Carmichael is part of the conspiracy our AC-12 heroes have been uncovering.
First there was the fact that she’d bugged the cars of all AC-12 officers, meaning she was able to track Kate Fleming and Jo Davidson down when they escaped with Steve Arnott’s car (as an aside, how great is it that Kate and Steve still had access to each others homes, cars and a burner phone, to be used IN THESE EXACT SORT OF CIRCUMSTANCES? Love how much the always have each other’s back).
Then, during the interview with Jo Davidson, Carmichael shut down Hastings' or Arnott’s line of questioning whenever they started to glean more information from Davidson about the wider nature of the conspiracy. In particular, she seemed keen to change the subject every time Chief Constable Osborne was named.
READ MORE: Philip Osborne Appears To Be One Of The Shadiest Characters In The Line Of Duty Universe
She also asked DC Chloe Bishop to remove Osborne’s picture from the board of suspects linked to the case, despite his links to many of the operations being investigated by AC-12, and is seen putting his image through a shredder. And when Hastings questions why she bugged AC-12’s cars, she said it was because she, and Osborne, did not trust AC-12 - suggesting that the pair are certainly in league.