Dept. Q Episode 3 Explained: Crime of Opportunity

Dept. Q Season 1 Episode 3 Recap and Review

What happened in Dept. Q Episode 3?

Morck and Akram traveled to Mhòr to learn more about Merritt and William’s life before they moved away. Morck had a personality clash with the constable, whom he knew did not tell him everything, especially concerning Harry Jennings, the young man who attacked William and died trying to escape. Morck and Akram also spoke to Merritt’s father, who continued to harbour resentment toward his successful daughter.

With William’s help, the Q squad now zeroed in on a clue – a circular logo with a bird on it. William, through his drawings, said that he saw a man wearing a cap with that logo in the house and on the ferry. This same logo was on a paper stuck to the wall of Merritt’s cell. When she peeled it off, she found inscriptions that could only mean the hyperbaric chamber had had at least one other occupant in the past.

Rose had now joined Morck’s department, and despite his complaints about her chewing, drinking, and general presence, she had his immediate trust. He shared with her a suspicion he has not yet shared with anyone else, that the investigation into Merritt’s disappearance was deliberately effed up. He wanted his squad to investigate the investigation. 

Case updates

Leith Park shooting

None this episode

Merritt Lingard’s Disappearance 

Please refer to the summary above.

Graham Finch Murder Case

None this episode

Full recap and review

Mhòr, Merritt’s childhood home, was increasingly becoming the focus of the investigation. Morck and Hardy agreed that whatever happened to Merritt on the boat was a crime of opportunity. Whoever took her happened upon her as she and William took the ferry back to the place that held few good memories for them, and some truly horrific ones.

Constable Cunningham of Mhòr said there were dark clouds over the Lingard family. Their mother died in an automobile accident when the children were very young. Their father was too drunk to take care of them. Merritt was trouble, but young William stepped up. Things changed when Wiliam was attacked.

Harry Jennings, according to Cunningham, was a local offender with a string of robberies under his belt. He broke into the Lingard home while William was there asleep. He died trying to evade arrest. He got into the ferry, and must have thought he had gotten away, but Cunningham called the captain. As the captain and the first mate approached him, he jumped into the water.

Morck, who was not quite buying what Cunningham was selling and was not politic enough to hide it, said the ferry jump did not seem high enough to kill somebody. Fergus Dunbar said the same thing. Cunningham pointed out that Harry was drunk, his blood alcohol level was off the charts. 

Jamie Lingard’s house was near water, with lots of space, remote, just like Merritt’s house. Inside there were photos of William but none of Merritt; the years, even her disappearance, did not make her father any fonder of her. He did acknowledge that Merritt was right in taking William away, in becoming his legal guardian when she was only 24. If Jamie were concerned that something horrible happened to his daughter, he gave no indication of it. His voice dripped with years of resentment as he told the police Merritt stole her mother’s necklace from him. It was all he had and she took it, to hurt him. 

Unknown to Morck and Akram, who came to question him, Jamie’s wife Lila came from a very wealthy family. Lila’s family cut her off after she married the much older Jamie, who happened to be a fisherman and therefore unacceptable to Lila’s posh relations. When Lila left, Jamie had been under the impression that she would make things right with her family, then come back. Merritt disabused him of this. Lila would not have come back. She wanted her family to set aside money for Merritt and William. Her family would not do that for as long as she was with Jamie. This explained Merritt and William’s large, well-appointed house; they must have received money from Lila’s family, just as she wanted. 

Morck and Akram’s trip to Mhòr left them with more questions than answers, but just the ferry ride alone gave them important insight – whilst the taking of Merritt was a crime of opportunity, someone had been watching her. Just then, the camera very deliberately focused on the back pocket of a man wearing a high-visibility vest, where a hat with a bird logo was stuffed, the same logo William drew.

William was missing, he has been since he saw Merritt’s photo at the press conference. Morck tasked Akram to find him because, as he said, he was very good at finding things that don’t want to be found. It was hardly a boast, just a statement of fact. Akram drove to Merritt’s house, where he found three kids squatting. He questioned them, and after his brief display of (torture) skill, they talked. William had been there, but he ran off when they arrived. William went through his box of drawings and took just one. 

He could only have gone to one place. Morck and Akram found him in Claire Marsh’s garden. William showed them his drawing – on one side was the circular bird logo, on the other was a faceless man wearing a hat with the same logo. William struggled to communicate, but they got there – William had seen that man at home and on the ferry.

This same bird logo was on a piece of paper that was stuck to Merritt’s wall. When Merritt scratched the paper off, she found that someone had carved the letters L and H on the wall, along with Why are you here?. That could only mean that Merritt was not the first one imprisoned in that hyperbaric chamber, that there was at least one other person who was forced to play this twisted game of guessing why they were incarcerated.

Back at the Q quarters, Rose tried to identify the bird in William’s drawing, and thought it looked like a boobrie. Coincidentally, Jamie Lingard’s boat was named Boobrie II. 

It was a testament to the quality of Dept. Q’s writing that this episode did not at any point feel bogged down, despite it mostly being one police interview after another. Merritt’s limited screentime felt like a deliberate choice. Four years, and no one was looking for her, not even her father. Her housekeeper said she hoped the police never found her.* Her boss still insisted that he thought her darker side caught up with her. The biggest case of her case's team leader, Fergus Dunbar, was the Royal View Hotel housekeeping robbery and blackmail scandal; he was not equipped to solve such a high profile case.

Meanwhile, Merritt had been stuck for years inside a hyperbaric chamber, questioned, tortured – with increased pressure, with loud music so she could not sleep, even with the pain in her tooth that she could not attend to. The hellish red light was back, a visual reminder of what she had been enduring all this time. And no one cared, the world moved on and forgot her, until a man with a past chose her file, and a traumatised detective decided to look for her.  

Rating: A-

Strays

🔎* This rang a bit false for me, given that in Episode 2, Claire emphasised that Merritt loved her brother, she would not have left him like that. That meant that Merritt’s disappearance was not by choice. So why would she hope Merritt was never found? Why would she think it must be a relief for Merritt to be wherever she was? If she thought Merritt was dead, and she meant that she hoped the police would not find her body, well then finding Merritt’s body would not have had anything to do with Merritt’s melancholy. 

🔎As of this writing, I have not confirmed this, but it looked like the actor playing Merritt’s father was Clive Russell, who also played Brynden Blackfish in Game of Thrones. I was so happy to see Katie Dickie as Moira, having another GoT alum here is awesome. 

🔎On the ferry on the way to Mhòr, Morck grabbed Akram’s hat and tossed it, to mimic what William did on a similarly windy day. The wind caught the hat, it did not go into the water but back on the boat. They found it on the ferry’s parking space. There were cameras all over the place, but Merritt, after she left William, was not in any of them. 

🔎The trip to Mhòr was not planned, she only bought a ticket that morning. Why did Merritt suddenly decide to go home after 12 years?

🔎Rose: ’Look at you being a right proper mentor and all.’ For the third episode in a row, there is an allusion to Morck’s mentorship. Morck led Rose to the hypothesis he already had, that Merritt’s trip to Mhòr was not to see her father, but to see someone else.

🔎Jasper and Morck found some temporary peace with their truce, that was broken when Jasper’s mother called. Jasper left home with a suitcase.

🔎Rose tried several things to get Morck to agree to getting her assigned to his department. The one thing that seemed to work was her pointing out that Hardy would have wanted him to take her on; Rose’s father was Hardy’s training officer. 

🔎When Akram asked for a pool car, Rose knew that Morck was letting him, a civilian, investigate. She complained that she has not had a case in two years, since her breakdown, and that all she did was paperwork.

🔎Rose was tasked to look into Merritt’s life – her appointments, bank statements, etc. 

🔎I almost used ‘Ambuscade’ as the title of this post because I enjoyed that word. Thank you, Lord Advocate. Burns did not appreciate Morck ambushing him with questions outside the courthouse. He said Merritt would not have mentioned the threats she was receiving because she was never one of them. He gave her opportunities, but she always wanted more. 

🔎Akram: ‘What would I need a gun for?’ Kids, he could kill you with his thumb.

🔎Claire guessed that the bird on William’s drawing was a cormorant. 

🔎Hardy, about Morck: ‘He’s English.’ Nurse: ‘I’m so sorry.’ Lol.

🔎Hardy asked Morck for a computer so he could continue to help out with the investigation. Moira had no idea Hardy was helping. She was already furious at Morck for allowing his civilian assistant to play cop. 

🔎Since Morck has been skipping his therapy sessions, Dr. Irving went to the station. She said she saw the press conference and was worried about him. Every time Morck looks at Dr. Irving, I remember he’s Matthew Goode, and I mean that in a very good way.

🔎Boxes of files containing every case Merritt had worked on arrived at the Q office. Morck told his team to hold the files for a week, then send them back except the last five cases she worked. Akram, thorough guy, wanted to go through them.

🔎Morck sent Rose to Mhòr so she could chat up the local law enforcement and get Cunningham specifically to tell her whatever he did not tell Morck.

🔎Dr. Wallace watched William from the camera in his room. He was drawing a lot, and this time the man with the hat had a face. There was a flashback that showed William saw this man one rainy night outside their house.

You can access Recap Lab's full coverage of Dept. Q via this link.

Writers: Chandni Lakhani and Scott Frank

Director: Elisa Amoruso

Original Air Date: May 29, 2025

Home