'Van der Valk' Recap: Season 4 Episode 2

Van der Valk airs Sundays at 9:00 pm and is available to stream via the PBS app and wttw.com. Recap the previous and following episodes and previous seasons.
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The lawyer Anton told Van der Valk that the crime lord Bibi Franken would be waiting for him at a location dear to him – so Van der Valk and Lucienne head to their beloved pub. Bibi is there with some toughs, showing the pub owner Cliff photos of her sons as children. Cliff has a bruised face – he wouldn’t give Bibi Van der Valk’s phone number, so she had to acquire it forcibly.

Even though she’s the prime suspect in the killings of Gregor Albers and her own son Daan as they prepared to testify against her, she insists that she’s innocent. She wouldn’t kill her own son – she wants to find out who did, and take vengeance. She suggests that one of her enemies is trying to frame her in the killings in order to bring her down, rather than trust in the trial in which Gregor and Daan were to testify – she has escaped justice before by bribing judges.

She offers to work with Van der Valk to find the killer. He refuses. As she leaves, Van der Valk’s girlfriend Lena arrives. Bibi sent her a message asking her to come – just another way to mess with Van der Valk and show him that she knows who his loved ones are.

One benefit of the meeting is that the detectives now have Bibi’s fingerprints, as Cliff points out: she had a cup of coffee while waiting for Van der Valk.

Eddie is still missing, and his phone has now been found on the street – so Van der Valk is eager to solve things as soon as possible and save his colleague.

One colleague he doesn’t trust is Kalie Tenkers, who was in charge of protecting Gregor – and is an ex of Van der Valk. She confronts Van der Valk when she finds out his team has been looking into her file, thinking she might be involved in the killings. She tells him she will investigate the case whether Van der Valk works with her or not, because she feels responsibility towards Gregor.

And she produces a lead. Kalie arrives at Van der Valk’s boat early in the morning with coffee, letting herself in with the hidden key she knows about from her time dating him. Van der Valk awkwardly introduces her to Lena.

The coroner Hendrik discovered fragments of lithium in Daan’s body, suggesting that the bomb that killed him had a lithium battery triggered by the phone of someone nearby. Kalie thinks she knows who set it off. She has found an ID badge for a Frans Tanner, but he didn’t work at the compound – it must be a fake ID.

As Kalie leaves the boat, she apologizes to Van der Valk for his dog Mandy. Van der Valk explains to Lena that Mandy died from illness while he was gone and Kalie was with her. Van der Valk has always felt bad that Mandy was with someone she didn’t like when she died, and the incident contributed to the acrimonious end of his relationship with Kalie.

Frans Tanner isn’t the only one without much of a trace. Sofie Lommel, who died in mysterious circumstances last year and worked at bars run by the Frankens, has no father listed on her birth certificate, but her mother told the police that his name was Michael Becker. But there’s little record of him – perhaps it’s a fake name.

Van der Valk and Lucienne go to the lawyer Anton and ask for access to his files from his work representing Gregor and Daan against Bibi. He refuses to share them – it’s against his code as a lawyer. But he drops a hint that his office is easily entered without a key.

Lucienne, Van der Valk, and Dahlman search Anton’s office at night and find evidence that the Frankens were laundering money through their bars – but Sofie didn’t sign off on the fake accounts, even though she was the manager. Bibi’s son Xavi did.

Xavi denies knowing anything when the detectives approach him at his vegan cafe, and directs them to his lawyer.

Van der Valk now thinks the Frankens killed Sofie because she refused to go along with the money laundering, and whoever killed Gregor and Daan is trying to frame Bibi in revenge for Sofie’s murder. Suspecting that Jacko, the killer found hiding inside Gregor’s safehouse, has a connection to Sofie, Van der Valk impugns her in front of Jacko. He gets upset – Sofie seems to have been his girlfriend.

More evidence that Bibi is being framed emerges when Hendrik uses her coffee cup from the pub to find that her fingerprints are all over both safehouses. But they’re only on portable items that a pickpocket like Jacko could have taken and then planted.

So the detectives ask Bibi to use her as bait to catch her son’s killer. She will have to dismiss her security, so that the killer, seeking vengeance for Sofie, isn’t afraid to approach her. She agrees.

Meanwhile, Hendrik continues to cough blood. He tests his own blood, and what he finds upsets him. He informs Cliff, who cautions that Hendrik could be wrong about his diagnosis – he’s a coroner, not a doctor for living people. But Hendrik is despondent. He says he’s not going to tell Van der Valk.

Eddie is also taking matters into his own hands. Bound in the back of a van, he has managed to free himself. When his abductor opens the door, Eddie leaps out and subdues him. He then uses the man’s phone to take a photo and send it to Van der Valk. Van der Valk recognizes the man as “Frans Tanner.” Eddie ties up “Frans” and searches the compound where he has been taken, and learns that “Frans” is Sofie’s half-brother.

Van der Valk suspects that Sofie’s father was also involved in the killings of Gregor and Daan – and he knows who her father is. He’ll catch him using Bibi as bait.

He stops at the hospital where Daan’s privately hired security guard Baz is just being released after recovering from his injuries in the blast that killed Daan. Van der Valk updates Baz on the investigation, saying he believes that Bibi is innocent and is being framed.

Van der Valk then heads to Bibi’s mansion and waits. When there’s a noise at the door, Lucienne goes to investigate – and gets a gun pointed at her by Baz. He ushers her into the room with Van der Valk, Bibi, and Xavi. He is Sofie’s father and planned the killings to frame Bibi in revenge for killing his daughter – as Van der Valk figured out from watching footage of the bomb that killed Daan. Baz was close enough to the blast to survive but also be injured, deflecting blame – but he also raised his arm a second earlier than the blast. He knew it was coming.

Baz goes to attack Bibi, and Lucienne and Van der Valk disarm and subdue him. Xavi rushes into another room to grab a gun – but Kalie already has it, and points it at him. She ushers him into the next room and demands to know why Sofie was killed, and Bibi, afraid she will lose another son, admits that Sofie threatened to reveal the money laundering to the police. Daan was due to take over the criminal empire from Bibi, so she had him kill Sofie as a test. Daan had Gregor run Sofie over.

But then Bibi changed her mind and decided to turn the business over to Xavi, which led Daan to turn on her.

Now that Bibi has confessed, Kalie turns her gun over to Van der Valk. She’s working with him, not Baz. Bibi, Xavi, and Baz are all arrested. The team has not only taken down the killers of Gregor and Daan but also the entire Franken empire.