Episode 1×02 Recap

Fair warning, this episode recap alludes to things that happen in later episodes and contains spoilers. Proceed with caution if you haven’t seen the full season yet.

Episode 1×02

We go back in time to where Merritt is held captive in the hyperbaric chamber. Someone is watching her every move with a camera. We follow some of her routine – toilet paper being provided through an airlock, her sitting on the floor with knees drawn up and nothing to do, her eating a banana, taking a shower.

She scrawls something on the wall with blue crayon.

Kirsty Atkins
Drug Possession
2017

Merritt must have been here a while by now, the walls are scribbled with all kinds of names.

Back in the present, Carl and Akram are now looking more closely into the Lingard case. Akram found out that there were 18 cameras on the ferry but none of them showed what happened to Merritt after the altercation with William. She suddenly disappeared.

Carl still isn’t convinced that there’s more to her disappearance than her falling overboard and drowning. He has a point when he says that it’s kind of stupid to commit murder on a ferry, where you’re trapped with nowhere to go. So short of being “beamed aboard the mothership”, more likely what happened was that she was either thrown overboard by someone she pissed off or she fell overboard by accident or she jumped.

No matter what angle they look at—murder, kidnapping—it all seems implausible because a ferry is just not a smart place to do any of those things undetected. There was also no ransom, which makes kidnapping doubtful. Akram remarks it’s strange that, 4 years later, absolutely nothing has turned up – no body, no clue, no message, nothing.

Carl and Akram get nervous when Moira drops in for a surprise visit. Akram tries to covertly push the TV screen aside they pilfered from upstairs. She wants a progress report, wants Carl to tell her when they’re gonna pick their first case. “Yeah, well, we’re looking at about 8,000 options, so how’s spring?” he retorts.

Moira reminds him in no uncertain terms that there a sizeable budget they were given to solve cold cases, and Carl reminds her that none of that sizeable budget actually made it down to Department Q.

She harps on about how she needs them to decide on a case so that they can alert the press for some much-needed image polishing. Carl is his usual abrasive self, but Akram wants to pour oil on troubled water and tells Moira that Carl already picked a case. He presents the Lingard case, making sure he mentions that it was all Carl’s idea, with Carl vehemently protesting in the background that he’s not at all on board with any of this.

Moira is positively enthusiastic. The Lingard case will make for very good publicity. After she walks away, Carl is neither impressed nor amused. “Get the fuck out of here, Judas,” he tells Akram. He reaches into his drawer to grab the by now well-used tennis ball and squeezes the hell out of it.

I really wonder what kind of tennis balls they are using for this or if Matthew Goode has superior finger strength. The tennis ball I have at home barely budges when I squeeze it as hard as I can.

Upstairs, Bruce talks about the Leith Park case with his team. He wants them to focus on the witness, Caroline Kerr. Carl drops in with some unsolicited commentary. Caroline Kerr must have had connections to people in that building. Estates like that, everyone knows everyone.

Bruce defends himself by insisting they are keeping an eye on Kerr, but Carl pokes his finger into the wound and turns it, making Bruce look like an amateur by asking questions he should have answers to by now but doesn’t.

We learn an interesting titbit about Carl’s past here. He tells Bruce that he grew up in a place like the Leith Park estate. Makes you wonder what kind of shitty childhood he’s had. If I had to guess, and I know it’s a bit cliché, but I’m picturing a low income household, maybe parental unemployment and drug or alcohol abuse, Carl repeatedly a victim of crime, verbal and/or physical abuse or bullying. And with all of that looming over him, Carl was one of the lucky or determined ones who didn’t fall into the life of crime that he was born into, he fought tooth and nail to get the fuck out of there and make a better life for himself. Kind of tragic that the better life eventually fucked him over.

What Carl actually wants is to talk to Fergus Dunbar, nickname Fungus, the police officer who originally worked on the Lingard case. Apparently he’s now in rehab and no longer on active duty. Carl pays him a visit at the church he now volunteers at.

Carl seems to have accepted his fate, actually saying it out loud for the first time that they’re considering to reopen Merritt’s case. Dunbar smells an ambush, thinks that Carl is planning to call him out for having fucked up the investigation. Dunbar won’t have it, tells Carl about all the stops they pulled to try and find Merritt. They had searched the waters for weeks, interviewed everyone on the ferry.

Dunbar mentions Merritt’s brother, apparently the only eyewitness, but unfortunately also unable to communicate because of his mental disability. There were accusations of him having pushed Merritt overboard but Dunbar never bought into that theory. Of course Merritt had plenty other enemies from her professional life. Dunbar thinks William is the key to all of it, but he doesn’t have anything tangible.

When Carl gets back to the Department Q basement, he interrupts Akram who’s praying in a corner. “This is a police station, not a mosque.” Charming as ever, Carl. He wants to know the name of Merritt’s brother and where he is being held. Apparently it’s a treatment facility called Egley House.

Carl and Akram take a trip there. On the way, in the car, Akram gives Carl some insight into his personal life. He has two daughters, nine and eleven years old who both have Scottish accents and who always text him videos of cats. He’s lived in Scotland for eight years. His wife was a surgeon in Syria and they came to Edinburgh because they needed doctors. Carl asks him if he worked for the police, and Akram just says, “Yeah.” The man is a bit of an enigma.

Not entirely unexpected, but Carl and Akram aren’t exactly welcomed with open arms at Egley House. It’s clearly a posh place that you only get into if you have large sums of money to spare. The head of the facility fits right in – more concerned with prestige, her image and her makeup than the people she houses.

She tells Carl and Akram in no uncertain terms that they cannot speak to William and that William is not able to communicate anyway because of his aphasia. The posh lady (her name is Dr. Wallace) explains that four years ago, the police already tried to question William for hours to no avail and that the whole thing traumatised him. She claims that William has withdrawn from the world and that he draws all day but has lost the ability to communicate with anyone.

Interestingly, Wallace pushed to bring William to her facility, under the condition that she become his legal guardian. Her institute pays all of William’s expenses and she seems overly protective of him, which no doubt Carl finds both annoying and suspicious. Carl’s rapier-sharp wit rolls off of Wallace like water off a duck’s back. They have no warrant and little else in terms of leverage, so he and Akram have to leave empty-handed.

After one of Carl’s rather blunt weapon attacks on Wallace that she elegantly counters with a graceful evasion manoeuvre, Akram dryly remarks to Carl, “I am learning so much from you, sir.” It is Akram who makes their trip not totally useless after all, chatting up the front desk lady and extracting information from her that William is still being visited every week by someone named Claire Marsh – Merritt’s former housekeeper and William’s carer. And she lives nearby.

Upstairs in his room, we see William sitting in a chair, watching TV. There are no drawings whatsoever, and Wallace surely is shifty and dishonest. What is her deal?

Carl and Akram’s next stop is Claire’s house. When she doesn’t answer the door, Akram doesn’t beat around the bush and literally jumps over the fence into her back garden. Carl isn’t quite so acrobatic, so he lands rather ungracefully on the other side of the fence. The two don’t need to announce themselves anymore to Claire who is working in her small greenhouse.

Claire lies to them and says she hasn’t thought about either Merritt or William in years. Carl calls her on it and over tea (just milk for Carl, no milk for Akram) they interrogate her. She’s very protective of William and doesn’t trust anyone when it comes to him.

Claire is a bit of an odd duck – collects dolls and is very particular about where visitors are allowed to sit. She divulges that Dr. Wallace actually found William and relocated him from a council facility to her own, ostensibly to study him and write a book about him. What she also shares is that William wasn’t always disabled. He suffered severe head trauma when he was 16 that resulted in brain damage. She doesn’t know what the accident was that caused the head injury.

Claire is adamant that William isn’t a violent person, that he would only lash out if he was frustrated that he couldn’t communicate what he wanted. He would never have pushed his sister off the ferry. Merritt was on edge he week she disappeared, the case she was working on was getting to her.

Akram asks, “The Graham Finch case, the one she lost?” Carl shoots him a look. One of those that shoots daggers. The man is annoyingly well prepared – as opposed to Carl himself. What Graham Finch case? What’s surprising is that Merritt was also a very private person and very few people even knew about William’s existence before her disappearance.

It’s ironic how Carl describes Merritt when he suggests that Claire didn’t like Merritt very much. “I mean, I must say, she doesn’t sound that likeable. Always tense, keeps secrets, rude, no friends.” Yes, Carl. This is you. Akram’s look here speaks volumes.

Claire is adamant that, as cold as Merritt was, she loved her brother dearly and vice versa and that Merritt wouldn’t have jumped off the boat because of how much she cared about William. What’s also becoming increasingly clear is that Claire had an unhealthy attachment to William, perhaps an outlet for her to feel needed with a purpose in life.

As Carl and Akram discuss the tragedy of missing persons cases, Carl gets a call. It’s Jasper’s head teacher, reporting that Jasper didn’t show up at school that day. Carl goes right home to figure out what is going on. As usual, loud music is blaring from Jasper’s room. Carl is already angry and kills the power at the fuse box in the hall.

Now that the music has ceased, the sounds coming from Jasper’s room clearly indicate he is making out with a girl. Martin emerges too, dryly remarking that it’s the third time in 20 minutes they’re having a go. Carl is more interested in how long Jasper has been skipping school, but how should Martin know?

Martin tries to talk Carl down, but he’s thoroughly unsuccessful. Carl’s fucking pissed – which is, well, not all that different from his standard resting state. Jasper must have heard the voices and comes out of his room, interestingly still wearing his school uniform. He hangs his head when he sees Carl in the kitchen. A teenage girl with heavy makeup appears next to Jasper.

Carl gives his best to pretend he’s not actually livid, asking Jasper if he’s going to introduce them. Jasper just says, “Uh, no,” and walks out on Carl. Great. This parenting thing is going really well. Carl’s phone vibrates with a reminder that he isn’t thrilled about. His next appointment with Dr. Irving, no doubt.

At the police station, Rose is sorting through a stack of case files. It looks like pretty menial work. Akram seeks her out with a request: He wants access to all of Merritt Lingard’s cases. He tells a white lie that this came from Carl. Rose is surprised that Carl is letting Akram assist with the case. While Akram kindly describes Carl as a lone wolf, Rose calls him the fucking devil. There’s clearly some history there, she was a junior on his old team.

We also learn more about Rose’s past here. She used to work on Carl’s old team, together with Hardy, but there was some kind of incident that she downplays as a “minor issue”. It led to her being relegated to desk duty, which she clearly hates.

We see Rose in the bathroom, downing some pills. Moira comes in, refreshing her makeup. Rose takes the opportunity to ask Moira to get off desk duty. She says she’s taking her medication, hasn’t had an “episode” in months. Moira isn’t amenable, though, and it doesn’t help that Rose blurts out a passive aggressive comment that’s uncalled for.

Elsewhere in Edinburgh, Carl goes to his next work-mandated therapy session with Rachel. True to form, he parks the car in the most obnoxiously careless way he possibly can.

Carl is still determined not to be psychoanalysed, but Rachel digs right in. She wants to talk about how his best friend was shot in front of him and he thinks that it’s his fault. Rachel lays it out as it was: The whole thing was a giant cock-up. Carl and Hardy turned up to a call that wasn’t even theirs because Carl Morck does whatever he wants. He was the senior officer and took Hardy there, and it left Hardy partially paralysed and Carl, well… seriously pissed off. At everyone. All the time.

Rachel calls him out on his superiority complex as well, and Carl does what Carl does best: he deflects. But that isn’t all he does, he also actively provokes, this time in the form of making inappropriate comments about Rachel’s looks. The moment hangs heavy and silent between them and then Rachel moves her arm. Carl spots the wedding ring on her finger, remaking that she wasn’t wearing that last time.

Carl doesn’t take well to being caught off guard, nor to being rebuffed, so he lashes out again with another inappropriate statement that skirts the borders of sexual harassment. But this time he’s gone too far, and he knows it. He makes a feeble attempt to apologise, and now they’re totally off track and it’s super awkward. He suggests to go out and come back in to clear the air. Except he doesn’t: he takes the elevator and leaves. Rachel watches him get into his car across the street, and there’s more here than just a random client she’s being paid to see. She seems genuinely worried.

Another useless detail that no one will ever need to know, but the license plate on Carl’s old Ford is C255 TDF.

From his appointment, Carl goes straight to visit Hardy, and there’s a shock waiting for him there. Hardy’s bed is made and empty, Hardy is nowhere to be seen. Carl stops dead in his tracks, his face falls. Oh fuck. No, no, no, this can’t be.

Hats off to Matthew Goode’s brilliant acting here. Carl’s initial despair is so tangible here, you can practically read on his face and in his body language what’s going through his mind – from the tense startle as the nurse enters to the hunched shoulders and the utter look of distress in his eyes.

And then they wheel Hardy in, a jovial quip on Hardy’s tongue as if the rug hadn’t just been pulled out from under Carl. Carl steps back, deflates against the wall and closes his eyes. Holy shit. Hardy is alive.

Carl goes straight for the can of beer in his plastic bag. Hardy remarks that Carl looks like shite. “Well, it’s been a day,” Carl retorts. He shares his woes regarding Jasper’s extracurricular activities, but Hardy isn’t really in the right headspace to indulge Carl’s moody brooding, plus he probably missed the cues of how Carl’s world had just bottomed out for half a minute. Carl leaves again, but not before he wordlessly puts the Merritt Lingard file on Hardy’s bedside table. The latter picks it up and opens it, now curious.

And this was both a genius and a calculated move on Carl’s part. He knows he needs to pull Hardy out of the suicidal ideation, and what better way is there than to pique his interest with a new case, and make Hardy feel useful again because Carl could also use his brain and ideas on this case. And how fucking tragic would it have been if Carl had brought this lifeline to Hardy, only to find that it was already too late.

Speaking of Merritt, we jump back in time to Merritt being held captive in the hyperbaric chamber. She’s lying on a mattress in the dark until a light switches on. She gets up, her face is grimy, her hair stringy. Her captors are watching her from a control room via several cameras. A microphone is being switched on, the voice of an elderly woman greeting Merritt with a good morning, but there’s a voice changer so that the voice sounds deep and male to Merritt via the speakers. Merritt knows there are at least two of them.

The voice announces it’s a special day. The end of the month. And that means Merritt is being asked to tell them why she thinks she is being held captive. That’s what the names on the wall are about. Who is it that landed Merritt in this predicament? Her guess is Kirsty Atkins, a girl she put in prison.

There’s a flashback to when Merritt visits Kirsty in prison. Kirsty has called Merritt repeatedly on the phone. She wanted to testify in exchange for Merritt’s help. She divulges to Merritt that she has information about Graham Finch’s wife and she’s willing to share if Merritt helps her get out of prison.

Kirsty makes a desperate plea that she wants to start over, that she’s not the wrecked addict anymore she was when she was locked up and that she just needs a little help. Merritt finally caves and tells Kirsty that she’d have to testify in open court. Merritt’s leverage is limited, though, and Kirsty doesn’t like hearing that. She starts grabbing Merritt across the table and starts cursing her out. “You fucking cunt, I’ll kill you!” Merritt leaves, disgusted.

Rewatching this scene now, it has a whole new significance, and I have to admit that I totally missed it the first time around that Kirsty Atkins was even featured before she became a more significant player in the later episode with the dry cleaning service.

Now locked up herself, living her own kind of hell, Merritt has regrets for not helping Kirsty when she could have. She starts crying, but it falls on deaf ears. And now Merritt is the one who needs to pay.

Merritt thinks maybe she hit the nail on the head, that now they will let her go because she’s figured out why she’s being held. But no, Kirsty was not the reason, and they see through her little teary-eyed performance. Merritt desperately rattles off more names. George Ovenden, Finn McBain, Connor Campbell. She’s now been held here for at least two years, probably more. And she’d rather be dead than play these fucking games.

But that’s not really true, is it? If she really wanted to die, she’d have stopped eating a long time ago or found another way to kill herself.

This is an interesting nod to the novels, because there is actually a long sequence in the book about how Merritt tried to starve herself to death and towards the end was plotting more ways how to kill herself, mostly by using tools she clandestinely started sharpening to slit her wrists.

Alone in the Department Q basement, Carl calls his ex-wife on the phone. He only gets her voicemail so he leaves a message.

“Hi. I don’t know why I’m calling. Thought you might remember that I got shot in the head a few months ago. I’m fine, obviously. No big deal.”

No, Carl, not a big deal that you almost died and are now the shell of the man you used to be, barely holding it together. Not a big deal at all.

“Uh, Jasper. Fuck. Jasper’s same old Jasper. I mean, he hates my fucking guts. I think he hates everyone’s fucking guts, actually. Except for the girl he’s been shagging. Yeah, that’s happening. Hasn’t been to school in over a week. I know we said that he was gonna be better off with me, but I think I’m better off alone.”

This voice message has a certain importance because it’ll be referenced again in a later episode. Upon my first viewing, I didn’t pay much attention to it, and it took me a second viewing to realise that Carl’s voicemail that Vic later refers to was actually this one. This show is pretty unforgiving if you don’t pay close attention, but that’s also what I love about it.

Then the elevator dings and there’s the voice of a man entering the den. Smart clothes, smug expression. This is Stephen Burns, Lord Advocate and Merritt Lingard’s former supervisor. Interesting that Carl didn’t know him until then.

Burns inquires as to why they chose Merritt as their first case, and Carl takes all of Akram’s credit. Says he looked at the file and it screamed “all wrong” at him. They talk about the Finch case, that Merritt wanted to see Finch behind bars for killing his wife. Merritt didn’t like losing cases, so her plan was to go after Finch and charge him again with culpable homicide.

Burns is a little creepy, ambling around the room, picking up random objects. He has the intimidating presence of a man who owns every room he’s in without ever uttering so much as a threat. And maybe Carl has found a worthy adversary – someone who’s just as smart as he is, maybe even smarter.

What Carl can’t figure out is why Burns initially told the police he thought Merritt had committed suicide. Burns thinks she had a dark side and an unhealthy obsession with not being able to let go of cases. Ironically, Burns picks up the lone and by now pretty grimy tennis ball Carl keeps in his drawer. He must be getting a good amount of use out of it.

Just then Akram joins them, telling Carl he’s needed upstairs. Moira has organised a press conference and Carl is supposed to speak. Talk about being ambushed. Or maybe Carl didn’t bother to read the memo.

The department’s press liaison hands Carl a pre-prepared statement while they find him a tie and a coat. Carl is now cornered and knows he has to do his part. They slip a tie over his ratty old jeans shirt and put a suit jacket on him as he glances at the press statement.

There’s some more subtle but powerful acting here if you watch how Carl pulls back as someone puts the tie over his head. Having a stranger’s hands near his gunshot wounds clearly makes him uncomfortable.

Moira announces to the press that they’re opening up a new department dedicated to solving cold cases. Then Carl is being called to the podium, and he fumbles his way through reading off the statement. It’s clear that Carl isn’t prepared and thoroughly disconcerted.

Merritt’s captors have the telly on and the press conference snippet plays while they’re pouring tea. This comes as kind of a shock, four years later. Here they thought they had already gotten away with it…

Carl wants to make a hasty exit, but the press is asking questions now. Has there been any new evidence that led to the reopening of the case? Carl’s colleagues are exchanging worried glances behind the scenes. Carl is out of his depth and this is becoming a disaster.

And then things take a turn for the worse. A reporter asks if they’re any closer to finding the Leith Park shooter, and it all comes flooding back to Carl. The high pitched whine of charging and firing flashlights, Carl being put on the spot.

“I’m not involved in that, uh… investigation,” he stammers as the shooting replays in his mind. Someone called Dennis Piper from the Scottish Telegraph asks if it’s true that Carl and Hardy knew the victim, that he was a paid confidential informer who had insider knowledge about the police. The audience erupts in murmurs. Carl feels cornered, overwhelmed, cold sweat on his brow. He rushes out of the room. Standing on the sidelines, Akram doesn’t miss a beat. He has a keen eye and goes after Carl.

It’s not just Merritt’s captors who are watching the press conference on the telly. William also sees it, and something is triggered when Merritt’s photo shows on the screen. A switch is flipped and he takes the TV set and throws it clean out the window where it lands on the windscreen of a parked car below whose theft alarm goes off. William runs down the stairs and flees from the institution as Dr. Wallace looks on.

This scene makes the realist in me roll my eyes, because… really?! You can’t just throw a relatively small sized TV out a closed window. Even if this had been a single-glazed window (actually not super uncommon in the UK, especially for older buildings), the thing would have probably bounced off the window pane without going through it. Suspension of disbelief, where are you when I need you?

At the police station, Carl stumbles out the front door, groaning, “Oh, God.” He looks disoriented, his mind miles away. Cars honk their horns as he walks out into the street without looking, the scene of the shooting replaying over and over in his head.

He rips off the jacket, staggers to the side of the road where he clutches a lamp post. The shooter’s eyes peer down at him from behind a black ski mask. Carl pants for air as he stumbles on, leaning onto a metal fence, desperately trying to catch his breath.

And there is Akram, immediately recognising what’s going on. A panic attack. He tells Carl, who is convinced he’s having a heart attack to just breathe. He helps Carl through the whole thing, helps him get his breathing under control. And then, with practiced precision just when he has Carl’s full attention, he drives a point home. “Carl? When I am praying, don’t interrupt me.”

The screen goes black off of Carl’s nod and a shaky, “Okay.”