Emmerdale clues may have hinted that Marlon Dingle could be the killer of Ray Walters, with the truth set to be revealed in a week of flashback episodes on the ITV soap

Whether Marlon Dingle is a killer or not will be revealed on Emmerdale this week.

Someone has murdered Ray Walters, before spending recent weeks covering their tracks. Fans finally find out who that is this week, as flashbacks detail how Ray died and who was to blame.

Marlon is one of three named suspects, and he has as big a motive as anyone. His episode synopsis is rather cryptic too, but it’s clear he’s been hiding something.

Fans know that Marlon recently found out his teenaged daughter April Windsor was being targeted by Ray and his villainous mother Celia Daniels. Dragged into drug dealing and other sickening crimes, April only recently told her dad the truth.

Marlon vowed to go to the police but Celia and Ray threatened them all, before demanding thousands of pounds. Silenced, Marlon felt as though he could not save his family, so has he made the ultimate sacrifice in ending their misery by killing Ray?

Clues of his guilt could include their entire ordeal, and his secrecy in the fallout to Ray’s death. He was acting strangely and as if he was hiding something, while more recently he’s not been the most suspicious of the three named suspects.

Could this make him more likely to be the killer then? Something actor Mark Charnock said weeks ago to The Mirror could be an indication of whether Marlon could have killed Ray.

Mark suggested Marlon would go to any extremes possible to protect April, and that he might even kill. Was this a foreshadowing of the murder on the way?

He said in October: “I think he could do something extraordinarily reckless, I truly believe that character would sacrifice himself for his child. I think he could do something irrational that could cause everlasting damage. He’d do absolutely anything.”

In Marlon’s flashback episode, spoilers give very little away. It’s filled with other characters including Ross Barton and Paddy Dingle, while Marlon’s actions are limited, with it simply saying Marlon fears Ray has missing April.

So will Marlon confront Ray, and does this lead to Ray’s demise? Mark teased: “So there comes a point where he can no longer see where to go, and it leads into very desperate measures.

“I think he has lost all hope, he’s got to the point where only the worst kind of thing he could possibly do, like murder, is the only answer. He’s tried everything else.

“There are no options left to him. He’s just hit one way street, after one way street. He can’t even reverse out of it anymore. And he just needs to smash through the wall, he feels he has to resort to the worst thing any person can.”