'Van der Valk' Recap: Season 4 Episode 4

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 car that killed the wildlife trafficker Meatball is registered to Flinn Bovens, the boyfriend of the just-murdered wildlife campaigner Gerda Schalk. Flinn insists that he hasn’t used the car in a day and that he’s being framed. He also claims not to know Gerda’s colleague Jay Waldock well – but Jay’s phone shows that he and Flinn have been calling each other nonstop for the past day. Flinn must have also been involved in the trafficking of birds to which Jay admitted.

The detectives have Flinn followed when he is released. He visits Jesse Bergen, who grew up next door to Cobie Stegenga, the pop singer who disappeared two years ago and was seen on CCTV near the conference center where Gerda was killed. The detectives have also uncovered another connection between Gerda and Jesse: Gerda emailed him two days ago, asking to meet.

When Van der Valk and Lucienne ask Jesse about Gerda, he says he didn’t respond because he didn’t know Gerda and didn’t know why she wanted to meet. He’s convinced that his friend Cobie is dead by suicide; she was such an introvert, and the stress of going on a tour was too much.

In combing through Gerda’s things, the detectives have also noticed that she exchanged a lot of messages with someone using the username “Caged Bird” over the past few months. They argued over whether birds should be caged. The arguments put forth by “Caged Bird” in favor remind Eddie of the lyrics from one of Cobie’s songs. But “Caged Bird” had just started to come around to Gerda’s arguments. The tech team traces the messages from “Caged Bird” and finds that they originated from an empty field far from any civilization.

The detectives ask Cobie’s father Marcus for any of her possessions that might offer insight into her, but he says he gave everything to his neighbor, Anki, Jesse’s mother. The two families are very close.

Anki says Jesse and Cobie might have ended up together if she hadn’t disappeared. Jesse fell apart at her departure, but has since pulled his life back together. Anki gives the detectives Cobie’s notebooks and photo albums.

Eddie, a fan of Cobie, pores through it all. He finds a number of troubling references to a “man in black” – and Marcus always wears black. Anki tells the detectives that Marcus was protective of Cobie. But he only started wearing black when Cobie disappeared. Anki now does many chores for Marcus – they even have a bell rigged up in her houseboat that he rings when he wants lunch. She does it all happily.

Eddie finds a photo of a young Jesse in a goth phase – when he wore all black. He admits that he had a phase of being obsessed with Cobie when he was young. But he also has gambling debts, as the detectives discover, and regularly travels to Indonesia and Brazil – the same countries from which Jay Waldock admitted to smuggling birds.

Jesse admits that he, Flinn, and Jay all helped smuggle birds for Meatball, who introduced them all, but not of their own volition. They were blackmailed into it. Meatball involved Flinn, Gerda’s boyfriend, to avenge Gerda’s part in sending Meatball to prison. Meatball and his traffickers are the ones who trashed Flinn and Gerda’s apartment, in search of the money they were owed that Jay was late in getting to them because it was hidden in the conference center where Gerda was murdered.

Meatball was at the conference center in search of Jay and his money when Gerda was killed and must have seen something, then been killed with Flinn’s car to keep him quiet.

A clue to who killed him comes from Flinn, who mentions that he knows Jesse’s mom, Anki, even though she claimed to have never heard of Flinn. Jesse says Cobie relied on Anki like a mother, and that Anki was angry when she disappeared.

The detectives ask Gerda’s colleague Danielle Panhoff if she recognizes Anki. She does: Anki approached her and Gerda months ago saying that she had a friend who wanted to get in touch with Gerda, but it had to be confidential.

That friend was Cobie – “Caged Bird.” She keeps a bird in a cage with her as a companion in the lonely woods where she is in hiding, but has decided to let it free. She eventually missed her father after staging her death, and contacted Anki for help in returning to Amsterdam.

But Anki has always been in love with Marcus, and wanted him and her son Jesse, who also loved Cobie, to herself after Cobie broke both of their hearts. If Cobie returned, Anki thought that Marcus would no longer be as close to Anki. So Anki told Cobie that Marcus was angry at Cobie for disappearing, and that Cobie needed to give him time before reappearing.

Cobie, in her loneliness, asked Anki to connect her with Gerda, a known expert on birds, so that she could learn more about her beloved birds. Anki agreed, but then regretted it when Cobie wanted to meet Gerda and Gerda told Cobie that it was time to go home to her father. That’s also why Gerda emailed Cobie’s old friend Jesse asking to meet. Anki murdered Gerda to stop her from convincing Cobie to go back to her father.

Lucienne and Van der Valk follow Anki so that she will lead them to Cobie in the wilderness. Van der Valk’s car is having issues and keeps dying, so they nearly lose Anki and Cobie. But they place doubts in Cobie’s mind that Anki has her best interests at heart, and Lucienne shoots out Anki’s tire as she tries to flee with Cobie in the car. When Anki then threatens Cobie with an ax, Van der Valk shoots Anki’s hand. She is arrested and Cobie is finally reunited with her father.

Van der Valk has finally confronted Hendrik and asked what is troubling him. Hendrik reveals that he has throat cancer, at least according to the tests he ran on himself. Lucienne wonders if Hendrik has gotten an official diagnosis, and Hendrik says he has.

But Van der Valk has his doctor girlfriend Lena speak to Hendrik’s doctor, who says he hasn’t seen Hendrik in three years – not since he told Hendrik to stop drinking. Lena emphasizes that early treatment is crucial, and tells Van der Valk he has to get Hendrik into a clinic to get an official diagnosis and start treatment if necessary.