The Bay: New clues, new secrets and nobody we can trust - 5 burning questions after episode 2

After last week’s shocking and surprising cold open, viewers might have suspected The Bay would slow things down a few notches in the second episode.

However, apart from the detours into Lisa’s homelife and the return of her ex Andy Warren, there was no let up in the pace of the central mystery.

The arrival of new characters and the introduction of extra twists left us feeling further away from knowing the identity of the person responsible for Stephen Marshbrook’s murder than we were last week.

However, we are slowly unpicking the many secrets and lies lying beneath the happy families pretence of the Stephen's family.

Here are our five burning questions after episode two of the murder mystery…

1. Was Stephen having an affair?

All the early discussion around Stephen was that he was a man who could do no wrong. Hard-working, a family man and perfectly ordinary. Certainly not someone who would find themselves hunted down and assassinated by an Albanian hitman.

But perhaps there was more to Stephen than first met the eye. Stella (Sunetra Sarker) not very subtly dropped the hint that he was a fan of the ladies and the testimonies of his work colleagues didn’t tally up with the evidence offered by his wife Rose (Sharon Small, above).

His team believed that he left work at 6pm every day to spend the evening with his wife and kids. His wife and kids thought he was working late in the office. So was he playing away and if so, did anyone else know about?

2. How did Cass get involved with the gun?

Alongside the Albanian hitman, there was another person involved in the killing of Stephen – 12-year-old Cass Hammond (Kelcie Atkinson), who cycled off with the murder weapon.

Cass is in foster care and isn’t willing to give up details on how she got roped into helping out with the disposal of the weapon. Despite the police having CCTV and discovering the gun she dropped, she doesn’t believe it’s worthwhile giving up any details on why she was involved.

If Cass can be connected to Stephen or a member of his family, it would make a prime suspect much clearer.

3. Is Bill Bradwell suffering from dementia?

James Cosmo’s character believes that he’s perfectly fit and healthy and that his son Mark (Steven Robertson) and daughter in-law Stella are over-reacting by leaving reminders and notes everywhere.

Bill could be suffering from the early stages of dementia, but there is also the possibility that Mark and Stella are just trying to push him away from the business.

With Stephen believing that someone was skimming money out of the family firm, could Mark and Stella also be trying to get their hands on Bill’s cash by making him look sick and incapable of looking after himself?

4.  Why has Lisa's ex really returned?

At the moment, the returning father Andy Warren (Joe Absolom) doesn’t connect with the Stephen Marshbrook case. Perhaps he’s just involved to create some drama in Lisa’s homelife, but his anger issues are already apparent and he doesn’t cut a convincing figure as a father looking for redemption.

Is there any way he could tie into the central storyline? It might explain his sudden return home.

5. Is DI Manning going to lose his job?

Lisa pleaded with him to play by the rule book, but Manning (Daniel Ryan) opted to cut through procedure and red tape and look through Stephen’s business dealings on his own personal laptop.

A little bit of bending the rules might not normally matter, but if you do that a solicitors' business it could end up proving costly. Will Manning’s actions end up jeapordising the case and his own job, just like Lisa’s transgressions did in series 1?

Watch The Bay on Wednesdays at 9pm on ITV.

Catch the full season 1 and 2 box set on BritBox.