Karen Pirie season 2 sees our hero Karen, now a detective inspector, given a huge high high-profile cold case to solve, the kidnapping of oil heiress Catriona Grant and her young son Adam. It is based on Val McDermid's 2008 novel, "A Dark Domain", the second story in the author's Karen Pirie franchise. Spoilers ahead if you've not seen episode 1!
The episode opens in a fish and chip shop in East Rotheswell in 1984 and "Promised You a Miracle" by Simple Minds is playing. Good tune. Two 22-year-olds are chatting, one of them has a baby. They leave the cafe, and later we see them say their goodbyes.
One of the women, Catriona Grant (World on Fire's Julia Brown), puts her baby in the car, and then someone points a gun at her head, and she screams. The man tells her that if she screams again, she's dead and fires the gun as a final warning shot.
Her friend Bonnie arrives but is too late and sees the car speed off, with her friend taken by kidnappers.
Bonnie phones Catriona's father and tells him what's happened. The police talk to Bonnie and say they have every cop car out looking for Catriona, and they know it’s a special case.
In the car, the kidnapper waves the gun towards Catriona’s child, and she pulls his balaclava off. He says she will regret that.
We hear the police radio saying they have a match for the car Catriona was driving.
Catriona's parents receive a ransom demand and a photo of Catriona.
The police find the Vauxhall car, but it's in flames and explodes. And the credits start.
In the modern day, we see Karen giving a TV interview to the crime podcaster we met in the first series, Bel. Karen is now a detective inspector.
As Karen talks about her work, we see that a recent big storm has resulted in a body being found. A key is found on the body. Karen gets herself in a bit of a mess in the interview with Bel and walks out.
In the station, her junior, DC Jason "Mint" Murray, incorrectly calls her sergeant. They call into the boss’s office. He says they assume they know Dr River Wild, who’s Karen’s pal.
Her boss says they’ve found a body in the quarry. River says they were struggling to date the body as it was found in wetlands. They found a car key to a Vauxhall belonging to Catriona Grant.
She was an heiress to an oil fortune, Karen explains to Mint, who looks baffled as usual. Karen adds that she and her son were held for ransom, but it was never paid, and they were never seen again.
Her boss, Detective Chief Superintendent Lees, warns her that this mustn't leak and lets her pick her team. This is one of the biggest missing person cases Scotland has ever seen, adds her boss, piling the pressure on Karen.
Karen has a drink with DS Phil Parhatka. He reassures her she's perfect for the case. Karen wants him on the team. He’s worried because no one other than Mint knows they’re an item. He reluctantly agrees.
The next day, a hungover Karen and Mint go to see River. River says the person found was killed by a gunshot wound. The victim is Kevin Campbell, a gangster with an affiliation to the Lennox crime family, drug traffickers connected to Glasgow. River says it was an execution.
Karen's boss has given her a huge team and a posh office.
Karen fills in the team that Kevin Campbell had the key to Catriona’s burnt-out car when he was killed. He was a drug dealer. Kevin was dealing heroin in Edinburgh when Catriona was an art student there, so they could have crossed paths, but she wasn’t known to take drugs. The torching of the car and the letters suggest that Kevin wasn’t acting alone, and the fact that he was shot! Karen says it's likely he was working for the Lennox crime family. She adds that the police in 1984 never worked out where Catriona and her son, Adam, were held.
Karen says that Sir Broderick Grant (James Cosmo) has requested that she visit him today in his castle. She assures her boss she will give him a suitable level of respect.
Karen is greeted by a woman who works for Broderick, and she was there when Catriona was kidnapped. Karen meets Broderick..
Broderick says he's had an investigator look into Karen! She tells him about the drug dealer's body. He's unnerved.
Karen asks if he still thinks they're alive. He says Mary, his ex-wife, does. He says he's more realistic. Broderick then says Karen shouldn’t take this personally, but he doesn’t trust her as he’s been burned before.
We go back to 1984, and the police tell Broderick they will do everything they can to reunite him with his family. The police are with Broderick at a giant table and ask if they can speak to Adam's father. A man called Fergus steps forward and says he will answer their questions, but he hasn’t spoken to Catriona in ages. Broderick wants to pay whatever the kidnappers demand, but the young cop says they won’t, as it’s against UK policy. In the present, Broderick says that 40 years ago, he lost anything with meaning, and the police made promises they couldn't keep and should never have made.
A new member of Karen’s team introduces herself as DC Isla Stark (Six Four’s Saskia Ashdown). Karen takes her with her to see Lady Grant, Broderick's ex-wife. She explains she still talks to Broderick every day, even though they are divorced. She asks to look at a photo of the kidnapper, and they show her.
Mary, Lady Broderick, has a room dedicated to Catriona, including a log of all the sightings of her over the years. Mary reluctantly agrees they can take her work back to the station.
We go back to 1984, and the cops discuss that the anarchist group that took Catriona doesn't seem to exist.
Karen listens to the police interview from 1984 with Fergus, Catriona's ex. Fergus says he's never seen his son. He is married, and his affair, he says, with Catriona was a mistake. He says Catriona didn’t want him to be part of Adam’s life. Strange then that he still works for Broderick. On the night Catriona disappeared, he says he was with his wife. The lead cop wants to check, but he asks him not to as his wife is pregnant and doesn’t know about Adam!
Karen then listens to the lead cop’s interview with Bonnie. Bonnie says it was Catriona's idea to go to the fish and chip shop; they weren’t meant to go to the pub. She had Adam unexpectantly. She recalls Catriona made a phone call in the chippe, but she doesn’t know who to. Bonnie says how did they know they were going to be at the chippie and Karen is thinking the same.
Karen and Phil talk about the fact that Catriona phoned someone in a phone box, and she knew the number. Who did she call? Phil has been looking into Kevin's associates, and he has an older brother called Ryan, also with connections to the Lennox family, and also in and out of prison. He seems to have vanished since 2021. Phil says he might be an informant.
Karen goes to meet Mint in the middle of nowhere. He’s been looking at properties near the quarry where the body was found and couldn’t trace the owner of this one, which is boarded up.
We go back to 1984, and it seems this is the house where Catriona was held.
Mint explains that in 1984, they managed to trace the wallpaper in the background of the first ransom picture, but it didn’t help much as it was mass-produced. Mint shows Karen the wallpaper in the house and says it’s an exact match, including the shelves.
We hear the kidnapper’s demands, including that the ransom will be increased if the press finds out. They want a million pounds in used banknotes.
We see a demand posted into a letterbox, which turns out to be Rosie’s house. She is distressed reading it out.
We see the cops in 1984 talking to Mary and Broderick. The cops say they are circling a suspect. The suspect is a radical called Toby English, who they think knows Kat. We see the cops arrest Toby and interview him. He sarcastically claps the kidnappers in front of the police, who are frustrated.
The forensic team is all over the house, Mint found. Karen believes Kevin’s brother is in witness protection.
Isla tells Karen there’s a really weird dynamic between Catriona and Fergus. Isla’s been through Catriona’s drawings and found repeated ones of hands and arms with a distinct tattoo. Who is that person?
Karen goes to meet Bonnie, who is traumatized by what happened. She can’t identify Kevin as the kidnapper. She shows Bonnie Catriona's drawings of the hands.
Karen presses Bonnie and she remembers one night she went out with Catriona to a club. We see them dancing in the club. At the end of the night, Bonnie is snogging some guy. Catriona gives a guy a cigarette. He’s a part-time bouncer. They start flirting. Bonnie walks out of the club, but Catriona has driven off with the bouncer chap in the car. Could this be the mystery tattoo man?
In 1984, we see Catriona waking up with her mystery bouncer, who has the tattoo on his arm! It seems she sees a name of his wife on his arm, he tells her it's all over, she’s heard it all before. He says he’s married but very unhappily. She shows him a picture of her son. He wants to see her again. They start kissing.
Karen and Phil have a secret coffee at work. Phil is worried about locating Ryan because if they mess it up and the Lennox family finds out, they will kill him. He also feels Karen has put him in an awkward spot, asking him, as he feels he’s doing it for her, as they’re dating. Karen says Ryan is the key to the case. He can unlock who killed his brother.
Phil says he’s found Ryan’s ex-wife in Glasgow. Karen tells him to go and talk to her, but be careful.
Mint has found the owner of the cottage, Angela, who inherited it from her brother, Andy, who died by suicide in 1984, just after the kidnapping!
Angela comes in for an interview. They tell her they're interested in the cottage because that is where Catriona and her son were held. She's shocked. She has a photo of Andy. She says she didn’t think he had any tattoos. Karen produces a picture of Kevin and she recognises it.
She says Andy would have seen Kevin as a friend, but she didn’t see him as a friend to her brother. She says her brother was a gambling addict. We go back to 1984, and Kevin is having a drink with Andy. Andy says Kevin needs to tell his brother he doesn’t have the money. Kevin says he doesn’t think that’s a good idea. Kevin’s brother Ryan had given Andy a loan.
Angela remembers her brother was in a desperate state. She says he left a suicide letter. She says he threw himself off a cliff. She said they found his bike, but not his body. They had to wait seven years for him to be declared officially dead. Could he be alive? Or did Kevin and his brother kill him?
Phil knocks and tells the woman, Fiona, it’s about Kevin, her ex-husband’s brother.
Karen says they should leak Kevin's death to the press, and Phil fumes that the bosses won’t like that. They argue. Phil leaves.
Karen leaks the story to Bel, the podcaster, and we hear Karen listening to a news report about Kevin’s body being found. Also listening is Broderick. We also see what looks like Ryan watching a news report on the case.
Karen hints to her boss that Broderick leaked the info. Isla is called into the big boss’s office and told to basically spy on Karen for him. He puts pressure on her, and she agrees to snoop for him.
Mint and Karen are looking through miners’ strike footage from the area from 1984 that Isla found to see if they can see Catriona in it. In the background, they see Catriona with a mystery man, who we know is the man with the tattoo. Also on screen are Kevin and Andy! Karen wonders if they’re following Catriona.
We go back to 1984 to see it playing out. Andy says to Kevin that is oil fortune heiress Catriona, and he spies an opportunity. Andy bitterly tells Kevin that oil is one of the reasons they’re closing the mines.
Phil tells Karen he's going to see Ryan, who finally returned his calls after hearing about Kevin. Karen says she will come along. Isla is listening in.
They meet Ryan. He says he’s taking a big risk seeing them and says Kevin didn’t like the Lennox family. They all agree that something went wrong as the ransom was never paid out, and Kevin ended up dead. Ryan says it wasn’t Andy; he was too weak. Ryan says he wants Kevin to have a proper grave he can visit.
We go back to 1984 and see Andy and his fellow kidnapper Kevin together outside the house with nappies for Adam. And a third man is revealed, the boyfriend with the tattoo!
Ryan explains that the boyfriend set her up. Ryan says his name is Mick Prentice.
Karen and Phil return to Karen’s house to find that Karen’s work laptop and hard drive have been taken. Phil says you’re not supposed to bring that home! It seems she might have broken one rule too many.
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