Dept. Q episode 3 recap: the investigation turns to Merritt's past

Dept. Q is Netflix crime drama following detective Carl Morck (Matthew Goode) as he deals with the guilt of a shooting that left his partner paralysed and a younger officer dead.

As Carl returns to work, he's instructed to launch Department Q, a new arm of the police tasked with reopening cold cases. His first case, a missing prosecutor called Merritt Lingard, which threatens to throw his entire world into turmoil.

Here's a recap of everything that happened in Dept. Q episode 3.

The episode opens on Merritt inside the chamber. The older woman speaks to her saying they’re going to turn up the pressure to motivate her. She turns a dial to increase the air pressure and Merritt suffers. She tells Merritt it will be uncomfortable, but fine, as long as no-one opens the vents above her. If they did that, she’d die.

It cuts to Carl on the ferry. Akram is on the phone and he tells Carl that he needs to start answering his phone because William Lingard has gone missing. Carl wants to know where William would be going. They discuss Merritt and William’s fight on the ferry.

First, they talk about the hat and as Carl grabs Akram’s hat to toss it off the ferry, it flies backwards to where the cars are parked, not into the sea as they previously thought William’s had. So, they go down to retrieve Akram's hat and wonder that if Merritt did the same, it would've given whoever might have grabbed her an opportunity. Akram says it would be very lucky, considering Merritt hadn’t pre-planned the trip. Carl says it wasn't luck and that whoever it was would’ve been watching her. One of the ferry workers has a cap in his pocket with a logo on it.

They go to visit the constable, John, who talks of all the bad luck the Lingard’s have had. He says the mother died when they were little in an auto accident. When Carl asks more about the accident, John says whatever is in the file is what happened, but they’d have to go to Glasgow to look at it since that's where it happened. He then explains that William stepped up when their mother passed because their dad was a drunk. He says that William was a great student and Merritt was trouble. Then, it all changed after her brother was attacked.

John explains a man called Harry Jennings, who was a local offender, broke into the Lingard house to rob the place and ended up beating William. He says Merritt would’ve been out getting high with some guy. Harry died trying to evade arrest, jumping off the ferry. Carl mentions he didn’t think that would be high enough to kill someone and John says that Harry was very drunk when it happened. Carl asks where they can find Jamie Lingard, Merrit and William's father. As they go to leave, John questions whether Carl really thinks they’re going to find Merritt and he says he’s not sure, but he wants to know what happened.

Carl and Akram arrive to see Jamie, but when they knock on the door, it opens. They notice pictures of William, but not Merritt, and when they talk about the photos Jamie emerges, insulting Merritt. They tell him they’re reopening the investigation and question why he didn’t fight for the guardianship of William, but Jamie says Merritt threatened to take him to court. Akram mentions Jamie had a criminal record and Jamie says he agrees with what she did, even if she doesn't agree with Merritt normally. They mention that Merritt was coming to find him 12 years later, but he said he didn’t know she was.

Carl asks why Jamie never went to see William once he knew he was alone, but Jamie says he found it too hard to see him after his accident. He tells Carl and Akram they won’t find Merritt because she doesn’t want to be found. As they go to leave, Jamie says Merritt stole a necklace from him that belonged to her mother, even though it was all he had left of her.

There’s a flashback to Jamie talking to Merritt when she’s younger. He’s telling Merritt that when her mother got pregnant, her family cut her off. While Jamie says she was going to go back to her family to make it right and then come back to them, Merritt tells him she’s not coming back. He tells her he knows she’s angry at him, but he’s even angrier at himself. Merritt tells her dad that he didn’t save their mother and that she died trying to save him. To this, William walks in and tells her to stop. In the modern day, Merritt wakes inside the chamber. Loud music is blasted inside.

As they leave on the ferry home, Carl asks Akram to find William. It cuts to William walking through the woods and then fields. He’s made his way back to his and Merritt’s home. It’s been vandalised and inhabited by squatters. But, there’s no one there. Throughout the house, there’s leftover drug paraphernalia, but William manages to find a box of his drawings still intact, hidden in the wall. Inside, there are pictures of his family and then, the logo of the bird seen on the hat of the man on the ferry. He folds it up and puts it in his pocket.

Carl arrives home. The music is loud again and Carl storms into Jasper’s room. This time, he tells Carl to listen to the music as it represents how he makes him feel. Jasper asks for a truce, he wants them to stay out of each other's way. When Jasper says Carl isn’t a good father, Carl says Jasper isn’t a good son. He corrects him, stepson. Carl asks him to do what he’s told and Jasper says he’ll try if Carl tries to be nicer.

The next day, Rose is waiting outside the station for Carl. She asks how he’s doing and mentions that she has mental health problems, too. Rose asks to join his Dept. Q. When he asks why she wants to do that, she says she just wants to stop doing paperwork and work on a real case. Then she mentions that he lets Akram help him and threatens to tell Moira. She says she could help him dig and that Hardy was training her up before the shooting. Carl says he did that because he knew Rose’s father, who trained him. Carl agrees to let Rose join for a day and, as long as she doesn’t annoy him, he’ll think about it being longer.

Elsewhere, William wakes up to squatters surrounding him. He can’t talk, so he runs. Back at the police station, Carl asks Rose if she was close with her father. He follows it up by asking if she hadn’t heard from him in 12 years, what would make her want to go and see him? She says to say goodbye, if he was dying. He asks for more, but Rose realises he’s really asking about Merritt. Rose says Merritt is a different case since her dad was a drunk. Rose hypothesises that Merritt was actually going to see someone else. He asks Rose to look through her work diaries and bank statements to see if there’s anything odd.

Carl then suggests that the case was messed up on purpose and that Fergus Dunbar shouldn’t have been assigned the case in the first place. He instructs Rose to look internally, as well as externally. Then, Carl goes to see Stephen, Merritt’s old boss. He asks him for a list of everyone that Merritt worked with. He also questions Stephen as to whether he knew about the death threats.

Carl shows Stephen the messages Merritt received, but Stephen says Merritt never mentioned it. He says she wouldn’t have because she was never one of them. He describes her as “on the outside looking in”. He also said she had secrets. As Stephen walks off, he tells Carl if he wants to speak to him again, he needs to arrange it through his office.

Akram arrives at William and Merrit’s home. The squatters are passed out on the floor, so he looks around. He finds William’s drawings and wakes the squatters to ask him who opened the wall to get the drawings out. Akram shows them a photo of William and they say he was there. When he asks more questions, the squatters start to refuse and Akram hits one of them round the head. One of the women holds a knife out towards him and Akram grabs the man by the throat and says he’s got hold of a pressure point. It forces the other woman to answer, telling Akram that he ran off down the road. He thanks them and leaves.

Carl and Akram go to visit Claire, the Lingard's housekeeper. They ask if William is there, which she denies. They then show her CCTV of William spotted up the road. They ask to come in and look for themselves. Claire speaks of Merritt saying she was the most ruthless person she ever met. Akram looks out to the garden and sees William cowering in the greenhouse. Claire didn’t know he was there.

They sit down inside and William shows them the picture he drew of the bird. He turns it over and shows them there’s another picture of a faceless man wearing the hat that had the logo on it. Carl asks if it’s the hat William was wearing on the ferry, but he shakes his head. They decipher that William saw someone wearing that hat at his home and on the ferry. Meanwhile, Merritt sees the same logo as a silhouette on a document pinned inside the chamber.

Akram and Carl return William to Egley House. Then, Carl goes to visit Hardy. He tells him about his visit to Jamie, Merrit’s father. Hardy thinks that whatever happened on the ferry wasn’t planned. He then jokes with Carl about the press conference. He asks Carl for a computer so he can help him from his hospital bed. Back at the station, Moira’s waiting to ask questions about what Akram is doing. Carl says he gave Akram a task to do and that he also wants to keep Rose, too. As Carl tries to head down to Dept. Q, Moira tells him he’s forgetting to go to his appointments and Dr. Irving is waiting in her office.

Carl heads into Moira’s office and Dr. Irving says she’s worried about him. She says she watched the press conference and that she also had a panic attack, at her own wedding. She then found out the man she was going to marry was already married. She says she’s opening up to him, so he could try and do the same with her.

When Carl goes downstairs, there’s boxes full of all the cases Merritt Lingard ever worked on. He says they should keep them all for a week then send back everything apart from the last five cases she worked on. He also says he’s sending Rose up to Mhor to speak to the local constable again, John Cunningham. He thinks if Rose goes to talk to him, she might get more from him.

Carl gets a call and heads home. Martin is there, but no Jasper. Martin tells him that Jasper got a call from his mother and then got angry and left with a suitcase. It cuts to Egley House, Dr. Wallace is watching William drawing in his room on a camera. Suddenly, William has a flashback of Merritt practicing her speech for court on the Finch case. It’s raining heavily and William heads downstairs to watch TV. William looks outside and sees a man standing there wearing the hat with the logo on it. He can’t see his face and he starts screaming. At Egley House, he’s trying to draw him from memory, but can't do it.

Meanwhile, Merritt is staring at the document on the wall and starts to pick it off. Underneath, the letters L and H are carved into the wall with the sentence, “Why are you here?” under it. At the station, Rose is staring at William’s drawing of the logo and the man wearing the hat. She sits down and searches for birds of Scotland on her laptop.

She’s interrupted by a call from her mum and Rose lies and says she’s getting ready for a date, not at work. Rose comes across a bird in the book, a Boobrie. She goes over to the board and unpins the news cutting of the Mhor robbery with a picture of Jamie and his home. The boat outside is called “Boobrie II”.

All episodes of Dept. Q are available to stream on Netflix.