Karen Pirie is the hottest new police procedural on our screens right now. Adapted from the hit books by Val McDermid, the show follows detective Karen (Lauren Lyle) as she goes about unearthing and solving cold cases around Scotland.
This season, that would be the case of heiress Catriona Grant (Julia Brown), who went missing a decade ago after being abducted at gunpoint off the street, with her young son Adam.
Her disappearance was never solved, but when the body of local gangster Kevin is found in a lake, soon Karen is on the case and hunting for answers.
But how does the show end? We unpack it all.
What happens to Catriona?
As the show goes on, Karen discovers that Catriona was actually complicit in her own abduction. Together with her lover Mick (Mark Rowley), a striking miner, and his two accomplices Mark and Kevin, the group planned to stage the kidnapping as a way to punish Catriona’s father father, Brodie (James Cosmo).
The pair had fallen out about Catriona’s fling with Brodie’s employee Fergus, which ultimately led to Adam being born. Brodie kept Fergus on staff and Catriona, despite being an heiress, cut herself off from the family fortune. The ransom money, once collected by Mick, would be used to set the group up for life in a new country.
Catriona organised new passports for herself and Adam, but Mick (who was suspicious of Kevin) didn’t reveal that the kidnapping was staged.
Of course, things went wrong when Kevin overheard her and Mick and found out the truth. He threatened to go to her father, Brodie, and tell him the truth – and Catriona shot him in the head. She and Mick dumped his body in the lake.
There was an extra twist to come: Catriona’s body is then discovered by the Scottish police in a remote cave. When the team question Brodie’s wife Mary (Frances Tomelty) the truth all comes out.
It turns out that Brodie and Fergus found out that the entire thing was staged. The pair arranged to meet Adam, Catriona and Mick in a cave to hand over the money. Mary, who wasn’t aware of the truth, followed them with a gun, with the intention of getting Catriona back by force.
When she saw the group, she fired two shots that ended up killing her own daughter and triggered a landslide that buried her body. Mick, Adam and Andy managed to get away and fled the country, while Brodie and Mary clung to the hope that their daughter had survived.
What happens to Adam?
The baby Adam was spirited away to Italy by Mick and raised as his own son. Adam was renamed Gabriel, and he was tracked down by the team in the final episode, where he learned the truth about his parentage.
At the end of the show, Mary and Brodie are arrested, as is Adam’s biological father Fergus, whom he meets face to face. However, he chooses to continue living with Mick in Malta.
“There's no joy in closing a case like this, no joy, no celebration,” Karen say at the series’ end. Indeed not, but there is excellent TV.
Karen Pirie is streaming now on ITV
