'Annika' Recap: Season 2 Episode 4

Annika airs Sundays at 9:00 pm and is available to stream. Recap the previous and following episodes.
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An island as small as Jura, in the Inner Hebrides, lacks a lot. Annika and Michael take a helicopter to get there, leaving Blair behind because she’s pregnant. Since there is no police station, they set up temporary headquarters in a fish factory, where they again meet Harper Weston, who has transferred to their team to replace Tyrone.

Some fishermen found a body encased in a block of ice in the strait between Jura and its larger neighbor Islay in the early morning. There are no outstanding missing persons reports in the area, even going back decades, but the body can’t be identified until the ice is thawed.

Eilidh thinks she knows who it is, though. Her husband Qaiyum left after locking up the shop they owned together ten months ago. She didn’t report it because everyone assumed he ran off with his ex. The ex left Jura the day Qaiyum disappeared, and half the money in his and Eilidh’s joint account was transferred to her.

Qaiyum broke up with his ex because she had a mean streak, and he married Eilidh instead. His passport, some photos, and a big backpack were all missing after he disappeared.

But his ex didn’t kill him, Harper discovers when she visits the ice-making business she owns. He is very much alive, and he and the ex set up a business together. He tells Harper a large block of ice could be made by anyone: they just have to fill a chest freezer with water.

The harbormaster Salty gives the police a list of people that were out on the water early that morning. He circles one name: Chris Gray. She’s the ghillie, or gamekeeper, for a hotel on Islay. She would normally only be on the water at that time with hotel guests, but she was alone.

Chris says Salty isn’t reliable, and the hotel manager confirms that she was at work, not on the water, at that time.

Annika hears a recognizable voice at the hotel, which is hosting a conference of psychoanalysts, and walks into a talk to hear her one-time lover, Jake, presenting what sounds like a case study based on her and Morgan. She confronts him later, and he insists the study wasn’t about her. Annika ends up spending the night in his hotel room.

The next morning, Annika video-chats Morgan and accidentally reveals that she is with Jake. Morgan soon calls Jake, her one-time therapist, and asks him to help her convince Annika to let her work at an eco-resort for a week. Annika has already asked for Michael’s advice, and he has said it might be good for Morgan to get her mind off Erin, who just broke up with her. Morgan is currently grounded, under watch by Blair, for taking Annika’s boat. She’s so bored she called her grandpa.

Annika has other things to think about, however. She saw Chris handing over cash to the hotel manager, and learned that Chris punched a guest at the hotel bar on Monday. The cash was to make things right. Furthermore, there was no sign of her on the hotel’s CCTV the morning the body was dumped, and her boat was missing from the harbor. The hotel manager was lying for her.

The victim in the ice has finally been identified. His name is Ronan McIntyre, and he has a distasteful tattoo on his butt that easily identifies him. He was a native of Jura but lived in Glasgow and exported produce from Jura and Islay, so he returned often. His boat is at Islay now, and has overstayed its booking.

He always stayed in the same cottage on Jura, owned by the couple Abeni and Olly. Ronan was an old friend, who stayed for free. He introduced Abeni to Olly, and paid for a round of IVF that has led to Abeni’s pregnancy. Ronan was always picking up girls, so people joke that he is the father of Abeni’s coming child. He missed Olly’s party celebrating his last days before becoming a dad.

Ronan’s work schedule shows he had a whisky tasting at the Islay hotel bar on Monday, and CCTV shows that he was there – and was the one punched by Chris, after joking around with a deer head mounted on the wall.

His boat is still in the Islay harbor, and has a chest freezer on it that’s full of venison. Michael investigates and gets locked in the cabin. He notices a man running onshore, and then smells gas.

The boat explodes – but Michael gets off safely. Annika catches the man by pushing him into the water. He admits he has anger problems, and was blowing up Ronan’s boat because Ronan just stopped buying the whisky he makes, even though Ronan knew that would end his business. He has an alibi, however: he was in Glasgow seeing a therapist when Ronan was killed.

When Harper approaches Chris about punching Ronan and reveals that he is dead, Chris collapses. She gets a phone call and hands it to Harper in her shock. It’s Blair, calling Ronan’s sister Tina (“Chris” is short for “Christina”) to inform her of her brother’s death.

Chris says Ronan liked to wind her up and went too far, so she punched him. She broke a finger and so went to the hospital after that. She lied about being on her boat early that morning because she was poaching lobster, and the hotel manager was in on it so she lied too.

Ronan’s watch broke when Chris punched him, but the watch made it back to his rental cottage on Jura even if his boat stayed in Islay. Thinking that café managers always remember a face, Annika asks the one at the ferry between the two isles if she saw Ronan – and she did. He caught the 11:00 pm ferry back to Jura. But he never made it to Olly’s party.

No one noticed Olly leave the pub, but CCTV shows that he did for about an hour before returning. Ronan took things too far, as he did with his sister, in joking with Olly that he was the father of Abeni’s child, so Olly killed him. Abeni makes ice sculptures, and Olly used her chest freezer to freeze Ronan’s body before dumping it.

Michael and Harper set off to apprehend Olly on his boat while Annika stays with Abeni, who has just gone into labor. She gives birth to a boy, and Michael and Harper capture Olly after a brief fight on the water. He doesn’t get to see his own new baby boy.

Annika tells Morgan she can go work at the eco-resort, explaining that Michael changed her mind. She then sets off to drive home with Jake. When they reach her house, a man is pulling luggage out of the trunk of a car. It’s her father.