Dept Q Episode 7 Recap: Who Stabbed Kirsty?

In Dept Q episode 7, Carl and Akram decide to handle things more directly. They go to Stephen Burns to ask his involvement about Kirsty’s attack or whether he had known Sam Haig. Although Stephen denies knowing Sam, he cannot completely deny Graham Finch’s involvement in her daughter’s accident. However, with no clear answers from Stephen, the pair decides to go meet Graham Finch directly at his private golf house. Graham Finch is a man who neither confirms nor denies—a gray space that definitely holds a few answers that our detectives are looking for, but it may be too early to have enough evidence to pin them on Finch. It is obvious that Graham Finch wanted to manipulate the trial; however, his lawyer is firm in saying that they would not need aggressive methods to stop Kirsty from testifying at the court since she was not a credible witness given her history of substance abuse.

Spoilers Ahead

Carl and Akram receive a call from Dennis Piper, the journalist with the Scottish Telegraph who questioned Archie Allen about being an informant at the press conference. Dennis sends a video of 17-year-old Sam, who was being interviewed by Terry Dundee in a post-offense scenario where Sam may have assaulted a guy who he claims to be stalking him, thinking he is his brother. We see the visual of a seventeen-year-old Sam. Shortly after, the duo meets Dennis Piper in person. He is a former colleague of Sam Haig, and he tells them to meet Terry Dundee for more information. Carl also drops his ego and goes to meet Rachel at her residence; he is eager to talk to her, but she, acting professional probably for the first time in her time in the series, dismisses Carl for his unwillingness to actively participate in therapy despite his multiple public crashdowns. In a flashback, we see Merritt bonding with Harry Jennings at her place, which her father does not approve of. Harry leaves shortly after his brother Lyle calls upon him, and we see another glimpse of the strained relationship shared between father and daughter over Merritt missing William’s football game. Merrit, in the tunnel, is hallucinating about her mother keeping the necklace by her side, pulling focus once again to the emotional value of the trinket. Merritt also has a toothache, and instead of antibiotics, she is given a pliers to extract her own tooth—could it come in handy afterwards? After all, it is a weapon. 

Hardy and Rose have dug up Sam’s telephone records and found messages from his climbing instructor, Paul Evans, relentlessly texting him about his whereabouts on the night he disappeared and asking whether he is accompanied by a female companion. Rose and Hardy suspect Paul and Sam had an amorous relationship under the covers, and Rose goes to meet Paul Evans at the climbing center, stumbling upon information on the night before Sam’s death. Merritt, on the Rubbish Day, when the old woman collects the monthly rubbish from Merritt’s chamber, throws the scissors through the airlock, which ends up stabbing the woman in the eye—with an eerie resemblance to Kirsty Atkin’s eye-stabbing incident. Merritt tries to call the emergency services from her phone, but before she succeeds, the man with the cormorant turns up and steps on her arm. The episode ends in a cliffhanger as we are concerned for Merritt’s safety now after her retaliation. 

Sam and Merritt were definitely connected in ways more than professional—their Thursday meetings were not justbout wire-free exchange of information but maybe something leading further back into a shared past. In Sam’s video interview, he seemed to be describing a guy that he beat up for stalking him who thought him to be his brother. When we see Harry Jennings in a flashback and his brother Lyle, Lyle seems to be bearing a striking resemblance to Sam. There still exists a narrative gap in knowing how Sam may be connected to Mohr, but Harry Jennings stalking Sam after his brother seems like a strong probability. 

When Rose meets Paul Evans, she already suspects from Paul’s messages that they may be involved in a secret relationship—which would explain why Paul’s wife was so averse to Paul’s alliance with Sam. However, the opposite turns out to be true. Paul sent his wife to apologize to Sam in the hotel, which seems a bit misplaced, given how worried Paul was about it later in the texts. According to Paul’s version, his wife and Sam ended up getting close that night. Like pieces in a puzzle, we are rebuilding Sam from memories of other characters. We are yet to explore Merritt and other characters and how they remember Sam.

There seems to be a shroud of mystery prevailing over the fact as to who may have stabbed Kirsty Atkins—with Graham Finch’s dismissal and a legible excuse that it was not him, we are left to wonder what may have been the motive behind attempting to kill Kirsty. In addition, Graham’s lawyer reveals that it is Sam Haig who voluntarily revealed this information to them during the trial. Whose team was Sam playing for? Were meetings with Merritt a way of learning about the case so that he could deliver the information to the right place? Graham’s lawyer mentions that the information was not paid for, nor transactional; this makes us wonder whether Sam had an ulterior motive to malign Merritt. In the previous episode, Carl had suspected Liam Taylor of acting out of vengeance toward Merritt because of how she left him cold; however, Sam did not seem to have been acting out of petty romantic misgivings; his story contains a bigger picture we have not caught sight of. 

Dept Q episode 7 pushes the narrative deeper into ambiguity. The posthumous investigation of Sam’s life shows a Rashomon-like portrait of him being a manipulator, potential lover, double agent, and perhaps even a victim. Each character remembers a different version of him, and yet none are complete. Now that we walk into the terrain of moral collapse and invisible manipulation, the characters are haunted by not just their past but by what they were forced to become in the circumstances. There seems to be an underlying sense of imitation that is taking place in this episode—the past repeats the present. With Lyle’s shadow on Sam and with Merritt’s attack that stabs the woman in the eye, is there a narrative hint that we are yet to unfold? We can only know as the mystery starts to unravel more.