Shetland season 9 episode 2 recap: what dark secret was Annie hiding before she died?
Shetland season 9 episode 2 reveals Annie was hiding a huge secret before she was murdered.
Shetland season 9 sees Ashley Jensen return as DI Ruth Calder as she is once again thrown into a dark and distressing case that she fights to solve with her colleague and friend Tosh (Alison O’Donnell). This season sees the pair drawn into a deeply personal investigation for Tosh when her friend, Annie Bett, goes missing and she suspects something is seriously wrong. But soon two crimes that the police are working on soon collide and the plot thickens.
Here is everything that happened in Shetland season 9 episode episode 2...
The second episode opens with an old news report on Annie Bett being a local maths genius and how she plans to go to Oxford to study maths, but as the news report talks about how Annie is destined for great things, the scene cuts to her lying dead on the floor of the old house where she was found murdered in episode one.
Tosh is clearly in shock at seeing her good friend dead and takes a while to hear the forensics team telling her that Annie was killed by a single gunshot from an automatic pistol.
Upstairs Calder is with Bergen's body and she has discovered he had a French ID card and a UK bank card on him. However, no phone or anything with his address on it was found with his body. Calder tells Tosh about how Malcolm Kidd blamed Bergen just after he had shot his brother. Calder reveals she thought Malcolm meant the place, but now it seems more likely he meant the dead man in the loft.
Tosh is worried that Annie's son, Noah saw the horrors unfold at the house, and while they can't be sure what he saw, Calder shows Tosh the bathroom, where a soft toy dinosaur and a blanket could be seen abandoned in an empty bath, confirming Noah was definitely in the house.
Calder and Tosh try and work out why Annie would have been meeting Bergen at an old house in the middle of the night, and Calder suggests an affair... but Tosh points out it is unlikely because not only is the house being renovated by Annie's husband, Ian, but she also brought her son with her.
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Ian Betts is still missing but Sandy is on the case, promising to track his phone as soon as it is turned back on. Calder asks him to dig up information on Bergen while they see Noah at the hospital.
Michael and Noreen Stack are at the hospital talking to Noah's doctor, and Tosh explains to Calder that Noreen is Ian's sister. Noreen begs Tosh for information on what happened to Annie, but she doesn't reveal anything.
Noah is not talking, but instead just counting under his breath. Tosh tries to ask him some questions about what happened at the old house, but he just starts counting again. When Tosh leaves the room to get a doctor, Calder tells Noah he missed number 31 after working out that he is counting prime numbers. The interruption brings Noah out of his trance and encourages him to open up... he asks where his mum is but he gets upset when Calder carefully tells him that Annie is dead. He asks why she is dead, but Calder tells him they don't know and were hoping he could help with that. However, when she asks about what happened at the old house, Noah starts having a panic attack.
The police arrive to visit John Harris and his sons just as they are getting back from mussel fishing. John is devastated to be told that Annie is dead.
Meanwhile, Calder is briefing the team back at the police station about what they know so far about Annie Bett and Anton Bergen's death. Tosh reveals they were both killed with a 9mm semi-automatic pistol, which is a serious bit of hardware and she says there can't be many of them on Shetland. They talk about how the only link they have between Annie and Bergen at the moment is that they were both at the old house that night. Calder wants a full background check on both of the victims.
Tosh and Calder visit Malcolm in jail and ask him about Anton Bergen. He tells them they just played poker together at a local Chinese restaurant. Bergen had won £1000 from Malcolm, which was his wedding fund and Malcolm tells Calder that he left the game to go home and tell Elenor that he'd lost their savings. But instead, he went to Andrew's house, and that is when he caught his brother and fiance in bed together. Tosh and Calder are disappointed to realise there is no link between Malcolm shooting Andrew and Annie and Bergen's murders.
Ian is still missing but has finally turned on his phone and they have tracked him down to the old mission, which is full of drunks. He is found passed out on an old mattress, drunk and covered in blood.
Calder and Tosh bring him in for questioning and tell him that Annie has been murdered, but he doesn't register at first becasue he is still drunk. He tells them he is the only one with access to the property and that he had stopped renovations on the house a while back. He doesn't recognise Bergen when shown a picture of him. Calder says the kids at the mission have revealed that he didn't turn up there until 5am after the night Annie died, but when asked where he went after the party, Ian refuses to talk.
Campervan Angus and Lisa are watching a warehouse and he is logging all the comings and goings in a notebook when she comes and asks for the keys to the campervan becasue they need food. Back at the police station, they have discovered that Lisa argued with Annie the day that she died, so an officer is sent to go and track Lisa down.
Calder and Tosh visit the family Anton Bergen worked for. They reveal he was a nurse for them, caring for their daughter, Astrid, who has a respiratory condition. They moved to Shetland six months ago when their daughter needed somewhere quiet away from London to live and Anton came too. As Tosh and Calder search Anton's room, they learn that he didn't come home on his weekends off and stayed in town, potentially with someone he was in a relationship with.
Sandy goes to the Chinese restaurant where the poker games are held. The owner doesn't seem to know Anton well, but when his son arrives back with some cooking oil, he seems shocked when he learns Bergen is dead.
As Lisa does her shopping a news report is playing on the radio about Annie and Bergen's murders. She then sees a police officer looking into the window of the campervan outside and panics, hiding between the food aisles and at the back of the shop before making a run for it and driving off before the officer can get to her.
Someone from Organised Crime and Counter Terrorism leaves a message for Calder asking her to call her back, and she is confused becasue she hasn't told them about the special gun that was used to kill Annie and Bergen. But before she can call them Professor Rossi comes to see her at the station and wants to know about the deaths he has just heard about on the radio. He asks if it is Annie and Calder confirms it is. He asks after Noah but once he knows that Noah is okay he tries to make a quick exit, but not before Calder gets him to give her his number.
Billy discovers incriminating texts from Ian's phone sent to Annie's and they head to his sister's house to arrest him for being involved in Annie and Bergen's murders. Everyone is shocked as Tosh cuffs Ian and brings him in for questioning.
Ian admits that the texts don't look good but he was angry and didn't mean any of it. He thought that she was having an affair and that it was her decision to end their marriage. Calder says they have found out that the taxi after the party took him to an address in town.... but he refuses to say what is at the address.
Meanwhile Sandy has discovered Bergen made fortnightly payments to the Harbour Hotel and heads there to find out more, while Billy tells Calder that Lisa Friel got away from their officer, but that Calder's brother, Alan might know where she is becasue he is well known for taking her under his wing.
Sandy tracks down Anton Bergen's boyfriend, who turns out to be Nathan, the son of the Chinese restaurant owner who runs the poker nights. He tells Tosh and Calder that they met fortnightly at the Harbor Hotel bar and stayed the night together in secret. He says that Bergan suddenly called time on their relationship on the day he died after getting a mysterious phone call and that it was a shock becasue things had been going well. Tosh asks who called him that night, but Nathan doesn't know.
Knowing that Bergen was in a relationship with Nathan, Tosh agrees that it now seems unlikely that Annie and Bergen were romantically involved. As they are talking Cora calls with the autopsy results and tells them that both victims died from gunshot wounds but that Annie had a scar on her shoulder, suggesting she has been shot before, however, there is nothing on her medical record that suggests she has been treated for a gunshot wound.
After hearing from Billy that the blood on Ian's shirt is his own, not Annie's or Bergen's, Tosh gets home to find her friend Joanie on her doorstep. She admits that Ian was with her after the party and that he stayed over because they were having an affair.
Ian is released from the station now he has an alibi for the time Annie was killed, but as he walks down the road a car swerves and hits him, and it is John Harris who is driving the car and leaves him for dead.
Meanwhile, Calder gets a call back from Organised Crime and Counter Terrorism and they tell her that someone from the Chief Constable's office has requested a report on Annie Bett but that he can't tell her why. She agrees to send the report tomorrow, but soon the penny drops that there is more to Annie than meets the eye.
She heads into town and confronts Professor Rossi... she has worked out that he and Annie are spies. Rossi tries to laugh off the claim, but Calder has him between a rock and a hard place and soon he all but admits it, saying that what Annie was secretly involved in is what got her killed.
Shetland season 9 airs at 9pm on Wednesdays on BBC One. It will also arrive on BBC iPlayer each week after the episode has aired on BBC One.
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