Dept. Q episode 5 recap: Rose follows a lead and Carl questions Dr. Wallace

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 5.

The episode begins at a climbing wall centre. Carl and Akram approach a man and ask him about how he found Sam Haig’s body. A pregnant woman comes over. Carl explains that Merritt Lingard went missing the day after Sam died and that they were in a relationship, so they’re trying to figure it out. They talk in the back and there’s a wall of photos, so Carl asks after Sam. He takes the photo of him down from the wall.

The man says he found Sam at the climbing centre and he’d fallen from the wall because he’d been climbing alone. The woman says she didn’t like Sam’s relationship with Paul, calling him a psycho. Paul then calls her Chloe and says that Sam knew she didn’t like him being around. Paul called Sam lonely and Chloe said he was always around, either at the centre or climbing the crag. Paul says it would take him 45 minutes or longer if he was alone.

They go to visit the crag and discuss how Sam climbed it alone without any ropes. Akram says that Sam died there on the Sunday and wasn’t found until the Monday because Paul found his car locked in the car park. They wonder if he was pushed, but they don’t know why, wondering if it was because of what he was up to with Merritt. Akram then notes that no car keys were ever found, despite Sam's car being the only one in the car park and locked. He thinks facts like these have been ignored on purpose.

There's a flashback of Merritt meeting Sam for the first time in a bar. Sam says he wasn’t sure she’d come and Merritt says she’s not staying. She says he needs to stop bothering her PA because she doesn’t want to talk to a reporter about her work. He thanks her for her time and shakes her hand, but still sits down to eat. Merritt chooses to sit down and questions how Sam doesn’t do profiles, he covers organised crime. He said he doesn’t want to cover Merritt, but his editor wants him to. He says he’s more interested now that he’s looking into her and can’t find much about her background, especially Mhor.

Merritt says she keeps her private life private. He's really trying to find out if there’s something going on in Merritt's department. She brushes it off and turns it on Sam, saying while he’s got bylines and awards, there’s no bio, social media or photos. He says if he wants to keep living, he keeps himself off the internet. She says they’re the same in that way. She leaves.

Dr. Irving comes down to find Carl in Dept. Q, but she only finds Rose moving a desk and helps her. She introduces herself as Rachel and says she’s looking for Carl. Rose asks after Dr. Sonnenberg and Rachel notes as Rose is lining up her desk that she might have been seeing her for the OCD. She mentions the other conditions she deals with. Rachel comments that the dark basement might not be the best place for her. She then notices the photo of Merritt on the board and says she met her at a party once with an ex. As Rachel goes to leave, Rose says she was the passenger in a pursuit when they hit a pensioner. Rachel says she’s sorry and Rose says she thinks Carl feels responsible for everything.

Carl and Akram drive to The Scottish Telegraph offices. The editor says Sam often met sources in hotels and that he couldn’t say if any sources went missing after Sam died. He also didn’t know if Sam was working with Merritt on something, but he says that it isn’t unusual. He said he didn’t really know him at all and wasn’t even sure Sam was his real name. Carl asks if he kept notes and his editor said if he did, only Sam would’ve known where they were. They tried to find his work, but came up with nothing.

Rose video calls Hardy in hospital to show him Dept. Q. He asks to see the board. He immediately asks about the cormorant, the bird on the hat. He says he knows that it's a cormorant, not a Boobrie as Rose suspected, because he was a fisherman. She explains the man wearing the hat, seen by William at home and on the ferry, had this logo on it. He asks her to scan both sides of William’s drawings and send it over to him.

At The Scottish Telegraph as Carl is leaving, a reporter called Dennis Piper is waiting for him. He asks if Carl had heard the news about PC Anderson’s fiancée. Carl doesn’t know what he’s talking about and Dennis says she had her baby and wondered if he had anything to comment. He asks if he wants to send an apology, to which Carl pushes him over a desk and leaves.

Back at Dept. Q, Akram finds Moira looking at the board. Carl has taken some personal time, so Moira asks Akram to walk her through the board. He explains they’ve been looking into who Merritt was. She mentions an incident at the Lingard house, a man with a crushed windpipe. He admits he only bruised it. She says that he’s not a policeman and that they’d all get in trouble if he does anything like this again.

Carl goes to visit Hardy at the hospital. Hardy tells him about the cormorant in the logo and says he has a motive for why someone might’ve taken Merritt. He says money from her mother, Lila. Her family was rich. The credit card Merritt was using under her mother’s maiden name is linked to a trust account on Jersey. They’re interrupted by the physio coming for a rehab session with Hardy. She tells Carl that Hardy might be able to walk again. Carl is surprised Hardy didn't tell him.

At the station, one of the officers says Moira wants to see Carl. He ignores the request and heads downstairs, while she watches. Hardy is on a video call and they discuss Merritt having money as a theory. Carl says that if Merritt was dead, the money is assumed to all go to William. Since he can’t manage the trust, it would be managed by his legal guardian, Dr. Wallace at Egley House.

Rachel comes out of her office to welcome her next client, but Moira is waiting for her. Again, Rachel says that Carl didn’t show up to his appointment. They talk about Carl shoving the reporter at The Scottish Telegraph. Rachel is worried he might do that to a suspect. Moira suggests Carl might respond better to a different therapist. Rachel tells her to look around and goes into her room.

The team arrives at Egley House. Akram and Rose head upstairs, while Carl goes in to speak to Dr. Wallace. He asks about her arrangement with William and she says she lets him stay there and in exchange, she gets to study him. Akram looks for William and he finds him in bed in a dark room. Carl asks Dr. Wallace what she gets for being William’s legal guardian and then asks if it has anything to do with handling his finances. Meanwhile, Akram asks the nurse what’s wrong with William. Rose enters and sees loads of drawings of the man wearing the hat.

Downstairs, Dr. Wallace reveals the bank appointed a lawyer to act as the trustee since Merritt went missing. He says he’ll search the office for a credit card or cheque book in William’s name. But, she says he won’t be searching the office without a permit. Carl questions why Dr. Wallace said she pays for all of William’s care in exchange for studying him. She says the bank would be alerting someone if she was spending too much money. He pushes on with his accusations and she threatens that she knows people in Carl’s world.

Akram enters and tells them William has been drugged, to which Dr. Wallace says he’s fine, just sedated. Rose then confirms that all the patients are sedated. Carl says they need to get William and take him away. Before they go, Carl says that he doesn’t think people will be happy to hear that she’s been spending William’s money and she sits down at her desk and asks to speak to her lawyer. They take William to Claire’s.

When Carl gets home, Jasper is leaving on the back of a girl’s moped. Martin is there and Carl is angry and says he should’ve told him Jasper came home, but he says Carl told him to mind his business. Martin says his truth is that he loves his life, his friend and his hobbies and asks Carl what his truth is. He doesn’t have an answer.

The next day at Dept. Q, Carl asks Rose where she’s going. She says to do laundry, Merritt’s. He asks why she’d be doing that and she says she’s gone through a year of bank statements and noticed a pattern of sorts. She noticed that Merritt visited a laundry, not near the Crown Offices or her home, though. Whereas normally she’d go to a posh laundry near work. This happened a week before she disappeared. Carl tells Rose to take Akram with her.

When they arrive at the laundry, she meets the woman who owns it, Shirley Atkins. They ask after the receipt and Shirley immediately gets angry saying why would she help them look for Merritt after what she did to her Kirsty. She says Merritt came there to apologise and lost her nerve, seeing Danny, Kirsty’s brother, who was working that day. She says Kirsty is her daughter and they can go and ask her themselves if they want to know why Merritt would be apologizing. She says after Merritt nearly got Kirsty killed in her previous prison, she got moved to another one, Pentlands, where they can visit her.

Carl goes to see Moira. She mentions her first partner, PC Mark Gilbey. She says he got called to a disturbance outside a pub, but there was a knife and Mark got hurt, leaving the job. She felt guilty and still does. She said she never wished it was her, which is what Carl basically said to the reporter at The Scottish Telegraph.

Moira's superiors want Carl to stand down and while Moira says it’s her call, she’s not sure she can handle many more of his problems. He says he’s doing everyone’s dirty work and asks Moira why she assigned Fergus Dunbar to the Lingard case and then pulled him off it. She said he did a good job, but there was no case to follow. She wants him to finish the case, quietly.

Rose and Akram meet Kirsty at the prison. She’s lost an eye and she thinks they’ve come to mess with her parole as she’s due out in six weeks. Rose tells her that Merritt disappeared the day after Kirsty was attacked in prison and Kirsty jokes that she hired a hitman to throw Merritt over the side of the ferry. Akram tells Kirsty that her injuries mean she was meant to be killed for something she knows. And that whatever it was was what she told Merritt to get early release, but Kirsty said Merritt bailed on her.

Kirsty tells them what she knows. She explains that she was in a women’s refuge where she met Finch’s wife who told her that her husband had tried to kill her. She said the woman left because she thought she’d be found and Kirsty didn’t see her again until she saw her on the news. She said Merritt had promised she could testify then, but at the last minute, decided Kirsty wasn’t credible. She says she called Merritt to tell her she was being threatened by two female life prisoners and begged for her help. Merritt asked if she was high then hung up on her.

In the chamber, Merritt remembers the conversation with Stephen after Finch’s trial. She's angry at Stephen for not letting her use Kirsty’s evidence. Then, another day, Stephen tells her that Kirsty has been stabbed. She goes to visit her in the hospital and the doctor tells her that if the attack wasn’t in prison, he would’ve thought a professional did it. After this, Merritt calls Sam Haig and says she’ll speak to him.

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