'Ridley' Recap: Season 2 Episode 1

Ridley airs Sundays at 7:00 pm on WTTW and is available to stream. Recap the previous and following episodes.
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Three men in motorcycle helmets smash into a jewelry store in broad daylight, grabbing items out of shattered display cases in front of terrified employees before dashing outside to their motorbikes and speeding away. The police have arrived quickly, however, and one of the thieves riding on the back of a motorbike falls off as the police pursue him and his abettors. He is apprehended and arrested.

His name is Ryan Stanford. After initially resisting questions, he’s almost ready to share the names of his conspirators when a lawyer, Rebecca Bayling, arrives on his behalf and ends the interview. She manages to get him released under supervision until his trial.

Ryan is met by his pregnant girlfriend Donna Burnside upon his release, but gets worked up when he sees a man sitting in a white van and hurries away from Donna. Soon afterwards, he’s hit by a car and killed in what seems to be a targeted attack. White paint flecks are found on his pants.

The robbery is just the latest in a series that the police suspect are linked to organized crime. The motorbikes used in it were stolen, but the perpetrators are believed to be low-level henchmen acting on orders from someone else. Ridley has an undercover cop as a source among Ryan and his friends, but her information about the robbery wasn’t quite accurate.

Her name is Tasha Walker, and she grew up with Donna, Ryan, and his friends before leaving for four years. She says she was in the army and returned home to bury her father, whom she hated. She tells Ridley that her information about the robbery came from overhearing Ryan and other young men chatting in the pub. But she dismisses one of them, Liam Manley, as a small-time operator.

Ryan’s grandfather has pointed the police towards Liam, whom he said was Ryan’s best friend, but when Farman went to the pub where Tasha bartends to speak to Liam, Tasha gave him an alibi for the robbery: he was fixing a fridge at the pub. Liam also says he was working as a painter when Ryan was killed – the company van is outside the pub and shows no signs of hitting Ryan, even though it matches the one that Ryan and Donna saw just before he was killed – not that the police know that.

Donna is worried that Ryan ratted on his friends, and tries to prevent his grandfather from sharing any information with the police. He raised Ryan, and Donna moved in with them both when she found out she was pregnant. Ryan swore to his grandfather that he’d turn his life around because of the pregnancy. (In other pregnancy news, Farman’s wife, Geri, is thinking about returning to work now that they’ve had their newborn for a while. Farman is not quite on board, given the price of childcare.)

Liam visits Ryan’s grandfather and warns him not to talk to the police any more – or else.

But the detectives can find other leads on their own. While in custody, Ryan called a Katharine Penrose’s cell phone. She heads up a stud farm that her husband Simon inherited. Ryan occasionally worked there, and Katharine says he called to ask her for help after his arrest. But one of the other workers says that Ryan spent a lot of time with Katharine, especially when her husband was away.

Ridley also wonders if the robbery might have been an inside job, in order to get an insurance payout. The owner of the jewelry store is Harry Bentham, who has lately been casually seeing Ridley’s friend Annie, who owns the jazz club where Ridley performs. Ridley may be a bit biased, but he doesn’t trust Harry – especially when he sees the size of the insurance claim. But Harry insists that insurance fraud wouldn’t have been worth it, given the damages and days he has to keep the shop closed.

The detectives also look into Rebecca Bayling, the lawyer who bailed out Ryan. She has done work for a number of shell companies, including one traced to Terry Sansom, who has a checkered past. He got off on a technicality a decade ago after being arrested for handling stolen goods after the robbery of an auction house, and was more recently questioned in connection with the killing of a diamond merchant in Rotterdam. He runs a hauling business, which would make a good front for criminal activity.

Rebecca reluctantly admits that Ryan worked occasionally for Terry – after the detectives suggest she might have helped Terry launder money. After Ryan was arrested, she got a call asking her to go help him; that’s how she arrived at the police station so quickly.

Harry Bentham tells Ridley – off the record – that Terry is known as a supplier of knock-off jewelry. He also says that whoever stole the jewelry from his store will need to sell it fast: high-end goods like those that were taken are usually stolen to order, so the thieves will need to turn the goods around quickly to please their clients.

Ridley still doesn’t quite trust Harry, having learned that he recently lost a load of money by buying shares in a mining company whose stock then tanked. And Ridley is less trusting of Tasha now as well, having learned that she gave Liam Manley an alibi while also trying to turn Ridley’s attention away from Liam.

Indeed, Tasha is dating Liam. She turns the police on to Liam and Ryan’s friend Cal Douglas, who works for the same painting company as Liam. Donna tells Tasha that Cal is the man Ryan saw in the company van right after getting released from custody; Donna is scared of him. And Cal is suspicious of Tasha.

The police bring Cal in for questioning and pin him to the robbery. The store had a spray defense mechanism that leaves a unique, unwashable trace on whomever it hits – and they find it on Cal. They also see a cut on his arm and match his blood to some found on the glass of a broken display case in the store. Cal gets angry under questioning and eventually admits that the stolen goods were brought to the Penrose stud farm. He and Ryan were simply low-level associates – they weren’t the ones in charge of the operation.

The detectives suspect that Liam was the third robber, but have nothing on him – yet. He visits Tasha at the pub and asks her to hide a bag of his clothes, which have the security spray on them. She reluctantly accepts – and Donna notices. Donna then reports Tasha to the police. Darren executes a warrant at Tasha’s mother’s home and finds the bag. Ridley is shocked to see Tasha in custody.