Dept. Q Episode 6 Explained: Graham Finch

What happened in Dept. Q Episode 6?

Here are the key points:

🔎Graham Finch’s thugs took Ls. The three he sent after Fergus Dunbar ended up getting beaten by one retired cop. Setting up Morck to get caught up on video on another assault was more successful, but the thug was later arrested, and Akram helped his driver accomplice fall down the stairs and break his leg. 

🔎Merritt told Sam Haig that someone from her department told Graham Finch about Kirsty, which almost got her killed. 

🔎Hardy uncovered a possible link between Graham Finch and Lord Advocate Stephen Burns – Burns’s daughter Julia, who claimed someone forced her off the road, which led to her accidentally hitting a jogger.

🔎No one thought to confirm if the wellness check call that led PC Anderson to Archie Allen’s flat was even real?

Case updates

Leith Park shooting

A suspect was arrested, but Morck could not identify him from the lineup. He deduced that PC Anderson played bumbling rookie at the scene (he was at the top of his class at the Academy) and likely knew the stabbing victim Archie Allen.  

Merritt Lingard’s Disappearance and Graham Finch Murder Case

Please refer to the key points above or the more detailed recap below. 

Full recap and review

The investigation into the disappearance of prosecutor Merritt Lingard now zeroed in on one man: Graham Finch. Though he did not appear on this episode, he and the violence that he wrought were all over it. Morck wanted to rattle his cage to see what he would do, and he did exactly what a powerful man without a conscience would, send in his thugs.

The first on the firing line was Fergus Dunbar, the team leader of the original investigation into Merritt’s case. He was jumped on by three men in suits and told that next time he saw Morck, tell him nothing. That message carried the assumption that he had something to tell, when Dunbar himself had said from the beginning that his investigation went nowhere. Akram may have been a tad generous when he told Dunbar that everywhere the Q squad went, Dunbar had already been, but we could not discount the possibility that Dunbar might have uncovered uncomfortable facts related to the case had he been allowed to continue. If his investigation truly went nowhere, why would a man like Graham Finch be this nervous about him years later?

Fergus Dunbar’s face bore the mark of his assault, but he walked away from that ambush with the three thugs down in the parking lot. This was one of the narrative decisions that lifted Dept. Q tonally – when the corrupt punches, the righteous punches back. We saw a couple more examples of this later on, with Morck and Akram; it was a good way to keep a show with elements of corruption and horror from sliding into the suffocating heaviness of a fruitless fight. The good (okay, good-ish) guys don’t take disrespect lying down.  

Graham Finch’s move against Morck was subtler. He sent his thug to the ice cream place where Jasper and Morck had agreed to meet. With Jasper sitting alone waiting for his stepfather, the thug described nauseating threats to the teenager, all whilst physically keeping him on his seat. He told Jasper to tell Morck what he said. The moment Morck walked in and saw Jasper’s face, he knew what happened.

Morck followed the thug outside and gave him frankly what he deserved. The man loudly said, ‘I’m not resisting’ whilst being deliberately provocative, and if Morck were thinking straight, he might have figured out before things got out of hand that he was being set up. A crowd had gathered with their phones out, filming a policeman beating down an unarmed man. It was only Jasper’s voice that brought Morck back from his fury.

Of course it was a setup. After that incident with the reporter Dennis Piper, it was clear that Morck was a man with buttons that could be pushed. DC Wilson (with Rose) pointed out that the Land Rover the thug approached was parked dead center, as though they knew where the street camera was. But, right after the incident, the thug got into a different car, a black BMW 7 series.

The BMW was registered to one Edmund Solomon, chauffeur at the Ballantyne Transfer and Security, which was owned by Finch Overseas Shipping. Akram removed his police lanyard and asked Rose to wait on the staircase landing whilst he went up to Solomon’s door. He told Solomon, who was about twice his size, that his car was on fire, then helped the man fall down the stairs. 

It was the middle of the day, Akram was technically a civilian employee, but based on Solomon’s neighbour’s reaction to Akram asking him to call an ambulance, it did not look like anyone would complain about the rough questioning (okay, torture) that happened there, not when it happened to a bully like Solomon. 

Akram’s past in Syria remained a mystery, but the gradual unfolding of his skills and personality has been a joy to watch. There was a dangerous edge to his politeness. Even when we could hear the crushing sound of Solomon’s bone, Akram’s voice remained mild, and he did not forget to say please. He was matter-of-fact when he told Solomon he would not kill him, but he would hurt him. It was a relief that he was on the Q squad’s side, because he would be very, very scary otherwise. 

As expected, Moira chewed out Morck for losing control in public for the second time in the same week. But, she refused to fire him, because she knew that was exactly what whoever set him up wanted to happen. The Q team finally let Moira in on the latest target of their investigation, the Lord Advocate himself, Stephen Burns. 

It was through Hardy’s patient work that the Q squad found the connection between Finch and Burns. A young lawyer named Julia Montgomery accidentally hit a man named Ned Finkle. Julia claimed that she was forced off the road by another vehicle that came up alongside her. Before Julia married an oral surgeon named Robert Montgomery, she was Julia Burns, daughter of Stephen Burns. Someone, likely Graham Finch, sent Burns a message, a threat to his daughter, and Merritt might have known. 

Dept. Q started with Merritt trying the Graham Finch case. Now we have circled back to it, with a better understanding of the forces at play on Merritt’s final case before her disappearance. Just as those investigating her case have shown their resilience amidst fresh challenges, Merritt did, too. There was a smashed soda can in the hatch her captors used to give her supplies, the sound of hissing air, and the woman’s voice complaining about a broken airlock. You could almost see Merritt’s mind turning as she held the soda can in her hands.

Just as it was odd that a cop with no experience in handling high profile cases was assigned to investigate Merritt’s case, it was odd, too, how DCI Logan Bruce was still lead in the Leith Park shooting. Bruce’s team’s best leads came from Morck. Morck had to walk them through his theory that there were two people involved. Now that Bruce finally arrested a suspect, he and Moira wanted Morck to come in for a lineup.

Morck was hesitant, because the shooter wore a mask and he only saw his eyes. He returned to the flat at Leith Park to jog his memory about that day. It was there that PCs Wilson and Clark found him. There was a marked difference in how they saw and treated him from Episode One to now, when they knew from first hand experience that he was brilliant. 

Wilson and Clark returned to the scene to see if they missed something. They now thought that the stabbing of Archie Allen was not the objective, it was to kill a cop. Morck said he and Hardy had no connection to the victim, they were just there by chance. Leith Park, however, was in PC Anderson’s section; he would be known there. 

Morck checked out Anderson, he was at the top of his class at the Academy. So why, then, was he playing dumb when Morck and Hardy arrived? He never mentioned the victim’s name, though the daughter would have told him. He touched furniture so his prints in the house would be written off as a rookie mistake. Morck surmised that Anderson had been inside the house, that he knew Archie Allen. Morck and Hardy arrived before he could polish his story to distance himself from the victim. He claimed a routine wellness check, which Bruce’s team seemed to have just accepted because no one even thought to check if Archie Arran Allen even had a daughter. 

Archie Allen was apparently a petty criminal. Morck brought up Dennis Piper’s claim that Allen was an informant. If he were, he would have been registered. Now there were three threads to follow for Wilson and Clark: the daughter, the informant claim, and PC Anderson.

There was a marked difference in the general thoroughness of the Q squad’s Merritt Lingard investigation, and Bruce’s team’s Leith Park shooting investigation. They did arrest someone, but Morck could not identify him from the lineup. Their shortcomings aside, with just the way Bruce, Wilson, and Clark spoke to Morck this episode, the thaw in their professional relationship was already visible. It was another mark to the general quality of Dept. Q, that relatively minor characters were given growth in the season.

Rating: A

Strays

🔎When Merritt and Sam met up at a cemetery that Merritt frequented, Sam went out of his way to emphasise his knowledge and experience as a reporter investigating dangerous people, and how little Merritt knew of it. He said they were likely already watching her. He asked if she has been getting nasty emails and threatening texts. He painted a scenario that after she was killed off, via a car accident or some such way, there would be a report of some nameless psycho who had been stalking her rather than professional hitmen working for the people she was about to go against.

🔎Merritt’s information for Sam was that someone from the Crown office told Graham Finch about Kirsty. Finch then tried to have her killed.

🔎The next time Merritt and Sam met, it was at her preferred hotel. Merritt finally remembered where she had seen Sam; he was at the Graham Finch trial every day, seated behind her boss, Stephen Burns. Merritt wondered if Sam was setting her up. They resolved their mutual distrust by undressing. 

🔎There was this creepy image of the guy in the bird cap watching Merritt from a window of the hyperbaric chamber.

🔎’I am Akram.’ Indeed you are, and you are awesome. 

🔎Rose and Akram in a bad neighbourhood -- Rose: 'I've got your back.' Akram: 'Thank you.' Lol.

🔎After Morck heard that Solomon fell down the stairs and was in the hospital with a broken leg, there was this hilarious camera pan from Morck looking at Akram to Akram suddenly finding the wall interesting, to Moira also looking at Akram.

🔎Fergus Dunbar said he was being followed since Morck came to see him. Morck was being followed too.

🔎The Q squad had Liam Taylor in their office, where they grilled him about Kirsty Atkins and brought up his affair with Merritt. It was a ruse. They got Liam to say that if he disallowed Kirsty as a witness, she would have gone above him, to Stephen Burns. Liam insisted that Burns brought Merritt into the department, he was invested in her success. He also warned Akram and Rose to be careful of what they learned from Morck.

🔎Rose’s story to Dr. Irving about her incident was incorrect and incomplete. As she told Akram, she was driving the car, and she hit an elderly couple. She tried to kill herself afterwards. It was Hardy who found her, and Hardy who saved her life just by being nice.

🔎After his assault on Finch’s thug went viral – Morck: ‘Will that get me laid?’ Martin: ‘Probably. But not necessarily by anyone you’d want.’ Lol. I need more Morck and Martin interactions. Also, Jasper has moved back home and even made his bed.

🔎The tennis balls are back! Morck was disappointed when he found Dr. Sonnenberg at the office and not Dr. Irving, and he walked out.

🔎Fergus Dunbar broke his three-year sobriety. Aw. 

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

Writers: Colette Kane and Scott Frank

Director: Scott Frank

Original Air Date: May 29, 2025

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