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 is murdered and soon a shocking twist reveals not everything is as it seems.
Here is everything that happened in Shetland season 9 episode episode 4...
The fourth episode opens with a flashback to John teaching Fergus about mussel fishing when he was a child. Patrick doesn't want to get involved, but Fergus is interested and John tells them this boat will be theirs one day. The episode then returns to the present day and picks up almost exactly where the third left off. We are taken back to the boat just after John Harris has accidentally struck his son, Fergus, around the head with a metal claw from their mussel fishing boat. John's eldest son, Patrick, who he had meant to hit, is making a mayday call, trying to get help for his brother while John does CPR on his son. However, it is too late, becasue Fergus stops breathing and dies in John's arms.
Calder and Tosh arrive at the Harris house and while Patrick is in shock about what has happened, John refuses to let go of his son's body when the police arrive. Calder talks to Patrick who tells her what happened and also admits that they were arguing about Annie and that he was the one who broke into the Bett house becasue he needed money to pay off a debt to JJ, but that he didn't kill Annie and Bergen.
John is taken to the police station and put in a cell, he is devastated and Tosh feels for him. Billy arrives and hands her the flight details for the planes Annie was asking Jamie about before she died and she asks him to keep an eye on Joh, clearly worried about him.
At the Jakobson house, Karin and Stefan make up after their fight the night before, but things are still tense between them. Stefan goes to check on Astrid and finds she is missing. He tells Karin not to call the police and that he will find her. We then see Astrid walking along a remote road, and she hides behind some rocks when a car passes her.
Back at the police station, Calder wants a search warrant for the marine research facility, but her boss, Harry, is reluctant to grant it seeing as the only link they have between the building and Annie and Bergen is the 'dinosaur' that Noah saw. However, a link is found when Sandy reveals the research place is funded by a company called Farmeres which is the same company that chartered the inbound flights that Annie was looking into before she died.
Calder finds out Angus and Lisa are staying with her brother, Alan, and she goes to visit, hoping Angus might be able to shed some light on the marine facility. He is reluctant at first but eventually tells Calder that Bergen told him a few weeks back that they were doing experiments at the research facility, and that it was sinister stuff. He says Bergen told him to look into the lab and so he did but once he was inside he thinks he was attacked. Calder and Tosh use this information to get a search warrant for the marine research facility and head down there straight away.
Inside the facility, it all looks legit until Clader realises a secret door has been covered up. They eventually open it and find the stairs that Angus fell down, which lead to a secret lab that is set up for experiments, complete with a hospital chair next to a drip. As Calder and Tosh get pathologist Cora down to look at what has been happening at the lab they take Doctor Mohan in for questioning. She seems surprised to hear Bergen has been murdered but refuses to comment on whether she knew him and refuses to answer any of Calder's questions.
Cora calls back with her results and it turns out Mohan has been working with stem cells from human embryos and creating a bespoke treatment, meaning she only has one patient and it has to be someone with money. Calder and Tosh immediately realise Doctor Mohan has to be working with the Jakobsons.
Calder confronts Doctor Mohan about working to help Astrid Jakobson with unlicensed medical treatment and she finally opens up. They discover Bergen went to the lab to stop the medical trial happening and that the night Bergen was killed Stefan had left the lab for an hour to confront him.
While Tosh and Calder head off to find Stefan and find out if he killed Bergen to stop him from revealing all about the lab, Astrid, who is still missing, is seen at the door of the Chinese restaurant where Nathan finds her and takes her in. Astrid asks him to help her escape the island and tells him that Bergen loved him and always said if she ever needed help then Nathan would be the person to ask.
Calder and Tosh head to the Jakobson house to speak to Stefan and discover that Astrid is missing and her passport has gone. Karin says she knew about the stem cell treatment but that Stefan doesn't let her get that involved and she has always wondered if it is doing more harm than good. Billy calls Tosh to say that Astrid is booked on a flight to Edinburgh leaving in 90 minutes and they wonder if she could be trying to see her birth mother. When they ask Karin where Astrid's birth mother is, she says Tallinn, which is where Calder asked her about earlier and she lied saying Bergen had no links to Estonia. However, it now seems Bergen was trying to get Astrid away from Shetland and back to her mother - giving Stefan a motive to kill him.
Ian arrives home from the hospital and is reunited with Noah, but while they are talking Rossi is watching them from afar.
Meanwhile, uniformed police are with Sandy, Tosh and Calder at the airport looking for Astrid, however, it is a decoy becasue she is really with Nathan down at the docks. He has booked a place on a transportation lorry, telling a friend at the dock that he needed to get some last-minute things to his cousin's restaurant in Aberdeen. Then, while no one is looking, Astrid climbs into the back of the lorry and hides, however, it isn't long before she feels unwell and passes out while Nathan tries to call her and is worried when she doesn't answer. Back at the airport, Stefan arrives after a tip-off from Karin, but although he is looking for his daughter, Sandy puts him under arrest for Bergen and Annie's murder.
Worried about Astrid, Nathan calls the station and tells the police that she is being transported in a blue truck to Aberdeen - they race to the ferry terminal and find her in the truck but she is unconscious.
While no one is looking, Ewan Rossi corners Noah at his house, introducing himself as a friend of Annie's. But before he can say any more, Ian arrives and angrily chases after him... eventually Rossi leaves but only after putting Ian in an arm lock and telling him that he knew Annie a long time before he did and that he is trying to find out what happened to her.
At the hospital, Tosh and Calder ask Astrid about Bergen. She says that at first they both thought the treatment from Doctor Mohan was a good thing, but then one day she collapsed and they agreed that Bergen would help her get away and that he had a friend, Annie, who would help her get off the island and to Astonia. But then Stefan found out about their plan the day that Bergen died and that when he came home that evening he had been crying.
Tosh and Calder question Stefan about the stem cell treatment and the fact Astrid was trying to run away, but he denies killing Bergen, although he does admit they fought the night he died. Stefan says he cried in his car after his fight with Bergen becasue he realised he couldn't save Astrid... and Sandy confirms this alibi by presenting Tosh and Calder with the tracking info from his car which proves he went nowhere near the old house where Bergen and Annie were killed.
Calder calls Rob Harding, her 'friend' in secret services and she leaves a message asking him to call her back about Ewan Rossi.
Sandy finds out that Bergen was in A&E with Astrid after she collapsed following her treatment the same night that Annie took her friend Tara into A&E and he thinks that is how the pair met. Tosh goes to see Tara and we discover that Tara was at the hospital because she was losing her baby, but she hasn't told her husband Frank, becasue she didn't want to get his hopes up as it isn't the first time it has happened. Tara remembers Astrid and Bergen at the hospital and that Astrid's parents were there in the corridor.
At home, Donny has spoken to Frank, who says Tara is upset since Tosh's visit but he doesn't know why. He is cross about Tosh's job interfering with their friendships and they have a big fight.
Later we see Astrid in hospital talking to her dad, who is still at the police station. She says she is tired of the treatment and he tells her that they can stop for a bit and just be a family.
Rob calls Calder back and after they spend a moment catching up, he tells her that Rossi is dangerous and seems concerned that he is on Shetland. Rob tells Calder she needs to bring him in and fast... meanwhile we see Rossi get a phonecall after which he heads to the Viking Bus Station, where he goes to a locker and gets out a bag with a gun that looks suspiciously like the one that killed Annie and Bergan.
What is he hiding and did he kill Annie?
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.
