Episode 1×04 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 series 1 yet.

Episode 1×04

We start off on the ferry named Pentalina, Merritt now looking for William’s hat that blew back onto the ferry after he tried to throw it overboard. She’s walking in between the rows of cars until she finds it on the ground, picks it up.

A female voice calls her name, she looks around, calling out, “Hello?”

The boot of a nearby car opens. Merritt, now curious, takes a look while the voice says, “Oh, Merritt Lingard, is that you?”

And then, a piece of fabric is pulled over her head, a man grabbing her from behind. Merritt struggles, and the man bashes her head into the windscreen of a car to shut her up.

Next we see Merritt waking up on the mattress in the hyperbaric chamber. She doesn’t know where she is, she bangs against the porthole window in the ceiling, calling out, “Hello? Hey! I’m talking to you!” There’s no answer but she’s being watched on camera. We briefly see the chamber specifications notice glued to the wall with the cormorant logo. Our next blink-and-you’ll-miss-it hint right here.

Merritt fumbles around in the chamber, tries to figure out where she is and if there’s a way out. Everything is locked or chained up. There are warnings about biohazard and chamber decompression.

She desperately calls out again that she’s an officer of the court, that people will be looking for her. She also wants to know where William is, she wants to speak to him. When her screaming becomes more frantic, loud, obnoxious music starts blaring from the speakers. Merritt collapses onto the barren mattress and covers her ears.

In modern day times, Carl is back with his therapist, vehemently complaining to Rachel that saying tatty-bye is fucking stupid and he hates it. Rachel has seamlessly adopted his communication style and mirrors his f-bombs with wild abandon.

She’s also trying to find a plumber to fix her broken dishwasher. Carl does actually divulge some personal information to her. Like the fact that he relocated to Edinburgh because of his marriage. And that he has a stepson who he has sole custody of.

This makes Rachel do a double-take. That information is new. His ex-wife travels a lot with work and she thought Carl would be the best person to look after her son as a “strong male figure in his life at this crucial juncture in his development”. So that’s the reason why Carl didn’t leave Scotland. He’s committed himself to caring for a teenager who isn’t even his own child. Not something Rachel would have expected.

It’s not just that the boy needs a place to stay. Carl actually cares about Jasper, his 17-year-old stepson. Enough to not want to leave him with his grandmother, who he calls “that fucking old bitch”.

Rachel ends their session on, “You’ve got a lot going on in your life right now, Carl. It’s no wonder you went doolally on live TV.” She sends him off with, “Tatty-bye, Carl.”

Back at the station, Carl can’t resist antagonising DCI Bruce, who’s currently discussing the Leith Park shooting with Wilson and Clark. He says maybe they missed something, maybe they need to do another walkthrough or interview the neighbours again.

Carl sidles up to him. Bruce accuses Carl of trying to sabotage the investigation but Carl just wants to help. He runs them through his version of events, which is that the shooter was waiting inside for Anderson, Hardy and Carl. They would have heard if someone came in while they were there, especially since there were bins piled up in front of the back door and there was a chair there as well.

When Carl and Hardy arrived at the scene, the bins and chair were undisturbed. Bruce says the bins were knocked over and the chair moved when he arrived on the scene later. Carl has a theory that the shooter had been inside the flat for a while, possibly overnight. Why, they don’t know, but someone went out the back door after the shooting.

There’s also CCTV footage that shows a guy dressed in black in a nearby McDonalds roughly 25 minutes before the shooting. There are remnants of a McDonald’s meal by a car parked near the scene which suggests that the guy at McDonald’s was also at the scene. According to the timestamps, there wasn’t enough time for that person to drive back to the flat, eat and drink and get into the flat to shoot people.

Carl asks a pertinent question: What side of the car did the person get in that their former witness saw? She didn’t say, but now here’s a new theory. There were two people. Was the person at McDonald’s the driver and the shooter the passenger?

Meanwhile, Rose visits Hardy to deliver his work laptop that Carl organised. (Which, btw, is the laptop that he asked Akram to get from Moira in a previous episode.) He asks how Carl is treating her, and Rose is convinced that Carl is giving her all the shite work because she basically blackmailed him into adding her to his team. But Hardy knows how to put her at ease. “No one can blackmail Carl. Because he doesn’t give a shit. Trust me on this. If he didn’t want you there, you wouldn’t be there.” Yup. Because Carl is secretly a softie at heart which he tries very hard to hide from everyone. But Hardy sees through it. Probably has for many years.

Rose tells Hardy about her upcoming trip to Mhòr that Carl sent her on, and Hardy gives her some pointers as to a recommended approach how to get the information that Carl has asked her to get. Hardy suggests she look into Harry Jennings to find connections.

We go back in time to when Merritt is held captive. The light in the chamber is being switched on, Merritt’s woollen jumper is full of holes, her face grimy. She goes to explore the chamber, now that there’s actual light. There is no way to escape, she is being watched with cameras and she now realises from all the pressure warnings that she’s in a pressure-controlled environment. This is grim.

Back in current times, Rose is making strides with the local constable on Mhòr, a chap called Cunningham. They laugh over a pub story he tells her. He also makes a comment about how an arsehole like Rose has for a boss can recruit someone as lovely as her. His own staff could use a little elevating, his eldest son Colin who’s sitting at the desk in the corner of the room isn’t really up to par. Even calls him a nitwit.

And then Rose makes her play, she asks about Harry Jennings and the break-in at the Lingard house. Cunningham keeps insisting that Harry was responsible for multiple break-ins at the time and that he had a foul temper and a lot of rage.

Merritt left Mhòr after William was attacked, Cunningham says. Colin mentions that Merritt did come back one time, though. For Harry’s funeral. So Rose asks why Merritt would come back for the funeral of the man who beat her brother half to death and robbed their house. Indeed, that doesn’t seem to add up, does it?

Rose wants to talk to Clive Jennings, the father, but he’s long passed away. The mum, Ailsa, is still around and Cunningham insists that Colin go with her if she wants to speak to Ailsa. On the way in the car, Rose calls it like it is, immediately spotting that Colin is gay and that he’s trapped on an island where he may not belong.

Rose’s cosying up to Colin also pays off here. He tells her that after Carl requested the crime scene photos from the break-in, his father dug the case file out of the archive and read it all night, upset about something. Which made Colin take a closer look, too. And there was one evidence photo that he found odd because someone (i.e. Constable Cunningham) had circled a necklace lying on the floor with a black marker. Rose asks for a scan of the photo.

As they enter the Jennings property, Rose is concerned about the hazardous material warning. There’s dead birds on the ground everywhere. Not very inviting. Rose asks what Jennings’ business had been, and Colin explains he was fixing and scrapping things.

There’s also the remnants of the burnt-down Jennings’ house, which is suspected to have been insurance fraud. Ailsa doesn’t seem to be home as they enter the mobile home she now lives in. Colin says she has a part-time job at the local church as a bookkeeper. Outside on the side there’s an ‘in memoriam’ memento to remember Harry.

They talk about how it’s not so easy to get away from Mhòr. Because while Merritt might have for a while, in the end she died in the same waters as Harry. If only they knew.

Back in Edinburgh, Carl gets home. There are voices from the kitchen. It’s his ex-wife Victoria, dressed in flight attendant’s attire, who decided to pay a visit, and Carl isn’t thrilled. Her words are cutting and her remarks snide, clearly there’s no love lost here between Carl and Victoria. She notes that Carl looks rough. “I nearly died,” he tells her. She asks, “Oh, this morning?” There’s also mention about what’s-his-name in duty free who Victoria obviously slept with, who she corrects is actually a pilot.

Victoria is there because Jasper left and is now staying with Victoria’s mother, who in turn called her daughter, hence Vic’s visit. Carl says Jasper left because Victoria played him the voicemail that Carl left her. (Remember, the one he recorded in the first episode? Where he tells her maybe he would be better off alone, i.e. without Jasper.)

Carl asks her why in God’s name she would play that voicemail to Jasper, and she says it’s because she wants Jasper to know that Carl’s current state of mind is not Jasper’s fault. Jasper idolises Carl and needs him to be a father figure, but of course Carl can barely hold his own life together after the shooting, so now they’re in this mess.

Victoria divulges a detail to Carl that he had not previously been aware of and that throws him for a loop. When Carl was shot, Jasper was there at the hospital and didn’t leave until Carl was out of surgery and out of danger. Which of course they never talked about. Victoria accuses Carl of shutting Jasper out, and of course Carl immediately goes on the offensive and starts yelling at her. She has to go, catch the flight out to Frankfurt. So what is Carl supposed to do? Pick Jasper up? Vic says, no, leave him. He’ll come back on his own because her mother will drive him crazy soon enough.

After her trip to Mhòr, Rose returns to the basement where Akram is waiting for her. She shows him a crime scene photo from the Lingard robbery and assault that depicts Lila Lingard’s pendant that was later reported stolen. Apparently Merritt came back for it on the day of Harry Jennings’ funeral.

Fun fact: If you have 3,200 quid to spare, you can buy the Merritt Lingard pendant that was made by Edinburgh-based goldsmith Liam Ross on jewellerybyliamross.com.

Back in the pressure chamber, Merritt is given more supplies. She quickly gulps down some water, then gets fed up with the whole thing and lashes out verbally at her abusers. As a “reward” they switch off the lights. Just one more thing to exert full power over Merritt.

Going back to Carl’s home life, he spends his off-time reading a novel when he hears the telltale beats of Jasper’s music blaring out from the other room. Eager to talk to him, he goes to investigate, but finds only Martin who is cooking with the Bluetooth speakers on. Apparently to study Jasper’s music to find out why he loathes it so much. It’s actually sweet that Martin is cooking Carl’s favourite dish because he wants to have a heart-to-heart with him about Jasper. Except liver isn’t Carl’s favourite dish, Jasper was just fucking with Martin when he said it was.

Martin thinks Carl should talk about Leith Park with Jasper. Of course Carl is less than inclined to actually do that, so he goes off on Martin, but not before he tells him that Carl only survived the shooting because the bullet was slowed down when it first went through Hardy’s spine.

But it’s not really that which he doesn’t want Jasper to hear, it’s that he doesn’t want him to know the danger that Carl puts himself in on a daily basis in the job that he does. Which Jasper probably already knows, but for some reason Carl thinks that it’ll do more harm than good to actually talk about it. Or maybe it’s more the fact that Carl doesn’t want to go back there because of the PTSD he is still vehemently denying.

The next morning, Carl, Akram and Rose discuss Rose’s new theory that the person William saw with the baseball cap is Jamie Lingard because it has the symbol of the name of his boat on it. And that he killed his own daughter to get the necklace back that Merritt reportedly stole from Jamie.

In the meantime, Akram unearths an envelope with a card in Merritt’s things that reads, I miss you already, look forward to the next time. Same room, I believe that bed brings good luck. S. Apparently it was sent by a florist. They theorise who it might have come from, and one potential person is Sabrine, Merritt’s personal assistant, whom they invite to the basement for a statement.

Sabrine tells them that Merritt definitely wasn’t into women. In fact, she didn’t share much about her personal life or her dating habits. The only person Merritt was ever friendly with at work was Liam Taylor.

Next, Carl and Akram go to find Liam, and they happen to pass by Greyfriars Bobby, which Akram has to touch. Carl is less than amused by this. The poor dog already had his nose replaced twice!

Fun fact: They must have closed off the street for filming this scene since Greyfriars Bobby is a massively popular tourist spot and there are always tourists there, no matter what time of year. There’s no way it would have been this deserted in real life, unless they filmed this at, like, 5 am or something.

They find Liam and incidentally also Stephen Burns in a pub down the road where the team is celebrating a court case win. From the conversation Carl has with Liam, they are definitely somewhat chummy. Carl must know his wife and kids and he also knows that Liam goes swimming over at Portobello Beach every morning, no matter the temps or the weather. Which is where he suggests they meet since Liam has to be off now.

Carl uses the opportunity to speak to Burns. And he introduces Akram with, “He holds my umbrella.” Carl asks Burns about the card but Burns says he has no idea who S. is, and it’s certainly not him.

Meanwhile, in his hospital bed, Hardy is doing a bit of research on the laptop that Rose dropped off. He looks through the Lingard file to see if something piques his interest, impressed by her BMW.

The next morning, as promised, Carl goes to seek out Liam Taylor as he emerges from the Firth of Forth. We learn that Carl is very much not a morning person, apparently. And that he has a shrivelled knob just from watching Liam swimming in this weather.

With a bit of interview work, Carl gets Liam to admit that he and Merritt actually had a short fling that lasted a month before Merritt broke it off. And he asks Carl politely not to put that in the file since Liam’s wife doesn’t know.

Liam tells Carl that he and Merritt used to meet at the Prince’s Garden Hotel, which is idyllically located in Queensferry near the Forth Bridge. One interesting piece of information that Liam shares with Carl, though, is that Merritt had a credit card in the name Lila Graham.

Carl, Akram and Rose then go to the hotel and ask one of the employees for the booking information for Merritt, which the man insists he can’t share for data protection reasons. Of course Carl isn’t so easily discouraged, so Carl being Carl, he more or less coerces the guy into giving them Merritt’s booking details.

When they study the print-out on the way back to the car, they find that a) Merritt didn’t leave any paper trail at all in her real name and that b) the person she spent time with in this hotel around the time of her disappearance was someone called Sam Haig. So who the fuck is Sam Haig?

Back all those years ago, Merritt is still being pressured into figuring out why she is being locked in the hyperbaric chamber. She thinks back to one of her hotel stays with Sam where she told him that she’s planning to go to Mhòr for a while. And this is probably how Lyle knew that she would be on the ferry where he captured her.

When Merritt tells her captors that it might be Sam Haig why she’s locked up, they say no, that’s not it, but that Sam Haig is dead because of her. And they put the pressure on, quite literally, because every wrong answer will now result in the pressure in the chamber being dialled up. Hooray.