This article contains spoilers for tonight’s EastEnders, which has not yet aired on TV but is available to watch now on BBC iPlayer.

Bernie Taylor (Clair Norris) finally saw the light over Dean Wicks (Matt Di Angelo) in recent scenes, but unfortunately it is too little too late.

In a shock twist last week, it was revealed that Bernie had joined forces with Dean in a bid to get Linda Carter (Kellie Bright) to drop her statement against him.

After stabbing Keanu Taylor (Danny Walters) to death last Christmas, Linda framed Dean for the crime with the help of The Six.

With Stacey Slater (Lacey Turner) having planted the murder weapon in his flat, Linda went to the police with a false statement insisting that she had seen Dean carrying Keanu’s body into the cafe.

More recently, the pressure has been piling on Linda as Dean’s trial gets closer, and Dean has been doing everything in his power to prevent Linda from taking the stand.

First, he got associate Fraser to offer her a deal to withdraw her statement in exchange for him confessing to raping her in 2014.

Linda was prepared to take the deal, but son Johnny Carter (Charlie Suff) knew not to trust Dean, and organised for Jack Branning (Scott Maslen) to arrest Fraser for blackmail and perverting the course of justice.

However, Dean didn’t stop there, and soon Linda began receiving poison pen letters, sent to her by Bernie.

In recent scenes, Bernie began to get cold feet about targeting Linda, though Dean was insistent that she was covering up the truth of what had really happened to Keanu.

As he stressed that the real culprit must have been Sharon Watts (Letitia Dean), he argued that Linda must be lying about this like she’d lied about him raping her.

However, Bernie was quick to point out that Linda hadn’t lied about the rape, and that she couldn’t be sure Dean was telling the truth now, despite his arguments that he had no reason to want Keanu dead.

Despite her doubts, Bernie continued to do Dean’s bidding, this time sending Linda a number of texts.

This suitably distracted Linda from her pre-trial hearing, and ended up driving Johnny to allow her to drink. This ended in complete disaster when the prosecutor realised that she was drunk, and refused to let her take the stand.

Dean was thrilled by this development, knowing that without Linda’s statement, the case against him would likely fall apart.