So, at the end of series three we left Tosh on the point of departing Shetland, and now…we know she's back, but how will it be handled? What’s the explanation? Anyway, first we have an extremely bearded man behind bars - looking very Shetlandic in the mode of a young Lord Norman Lamont or possibly a hipster barista. He’s in a jail with very high ceilings, and evidently he’s about to be released.
Cut to Jimmy back at the Lodberrie in Lerwick. He’s still wearing that pea jacket - I can vouch for the fact that such garments are neither waterproof nor warm enough for Shetland. Get some Gore-tex, pal. But hey, it’s summer. Though we do have that four-seasons-in-one-day thing going on.
Beardie man gets out of prison and is embraced by blonde woman: “It’s over Thomas. Fancy a pint?" But no. He wants to go home. And that’s not Kirkintilloch or Barrhead.
They’re agitated in Lerwick. Seems Thomas (Beardie) Malone was convicted of murdering one Lizzie Kilmuir in 1994, her body having been found inside an old lime kiln on the island of Unst. He confessed. Apparently.
But (technical detail alert!) It has now emerged that “secondary DNA pointed to a second suspect” and it wasn’t tested at the time. It’s being alleged that police withheld the evidence deliberately. Embarrassing. Malone has landed at Sumburgh, and Jimmy demands that all efforts are now put into finding “closure for the family”. Complicated law enforcement chat ensues: something fiduciary...neds down the nick...something...ticking timebomb... “evidential and non-evidential statements.” Bottom line: “There’s a second suspect out there, somewhere.”
Now, Sandy, slightly glaikit detective (always odd for me because Steven Robertson is very good at playing threatening psychopaths, as in He Kills Coppers, but hey, that’s acting) is pals with Lizzie Kilmuir’s twin sister who is very much still here and played by Neve McIntosh from Dr Who, with a Hebridean accent. It’s got to be time for an open air folk festival, shot at Gardie House on the island of Bressay, but we’re meant to think it’s on the (Shetland) Mainland. Which is what we call the biggest Shetland island. I know, I know.
“It’s not exactly Glastonbury, is it?” says someone. That’s Fullsceilidh Spellemenslag on stage, and everyone looks somewhat chilly. Certainly compared to Shetland’s last open air festival - Glusstonberry - which was boiling hot and had real toilets that flushed, not the chemical ones Tosh is averse to. We do festivals properly in the non-fictional Shetland.
Quick bit of back story - Sandy’s single, having split from his previous paramour, who had loads of kids and, I recall, a dodgy brother. “It’s for the best.” Indeed. We meet Lizzie’s sister and Sally MacColl, who argues with her clearly horrible boyfriend Alan, gets drunk, and then seems to wander off with a mysterious hooded figure. That doesn’t bode well.
So, Drew MacColl (Sally’s dad) makes his appearance, the cop who put Malone away in the first place. He’s old, bitter, carefully coiffed and completely certain of Malone’s guilt. He explains that Malone was fixated with Lizzie, that a witness came forward who saw him on the ferry and - clincher - Edmonston’s Chickweed was found on his shoes, and it only grows in Unst! Only in one quite inaccessible part of Unst, actually, and you wouldn’t necessarily tread on it accidentally, AND it’s a protected species, difficult to see. I used to look out on the Keen of Hamar and see tourists crawling along with magnifying glasses. But let that pass for the moment. Drew swears on his wife’s grave that Malone’s guilty. So he probably isn’t.
Malone bleakly wanders around what looks like most of Shetland's bleak bits before stumbling on the folk festival and then making himself scarce, even though he has a beard. Meanwhile, Jimmy is listening to the original police interview tapes and there is a Mysterious Gap before Malone’s admission of guilt. Hmm...
The next morning: Sally MacColl has gone missing. Thomas Malone is drinking beer for breakfast and smoking suspiciously. There's swearing, which is new for Shetland, I think. Nobody ever swears here. Gail Callaghan, a sort of social worker, gives Jimmy and Tosh a tongue lashing in fluent Glaswegian and also provides Thomas with an alibi - she was on the phone to him all night when Sally disappeared. Later it transpires that she was actually speaking to him for only three minutes. Might have appeared longer, though, as Thomas’s variable accent is difficult to understand, except when he too lurches into Glaswegian. Probably picked that up in prison.
Oh no! Sally’s body is discovered at Fladdabister inside an old lime kiln, like Lizzie’s was back in 1994. Killings in kilns! Nobody makes this joke, understandably. Another pun then pops up from the doctor-cum-pathologist (in real life, all post-mortems are carried out in Aberdeen). “My first stab at cause of death is strangulation,” she says. “I remember giving that girl her measles jab.” Stab, jab...I’m suspicious.
Malone goes for a local radio interview and it appears that BBC Radio Shetland has been spectacularly upgraded. I recognise those studios! Pacific Quay in Glasgow, BBC Scotland HQ. There's posh.
“I didnae do it,” says Thomas. Wow, contravening every broadcasting guideline ever known, there’s suddenly a phone-in and on the line is Kate Kilmuir, twin sister of alleged victim
What would you like to say, Kate? Here’s a turn up for the radio regulator, who breathes a sigh of relief: “I’m sorry. Thomas Malone is as much a victim of this crime as my sister was.” Jings. That’s not very Jerry Springer.
