'Patience' Recap: Episode 2

Patience airs Sundays at 7:00 pm and is available to stream. Recap the previous and following episodes.
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Patience won’t – or can’t, due to the stress – answer when asked in a police interrogation room why she was searching the parking lot where Aadesh Chopra died after he lit himself on fire. Bea starts to explain to her boss Baxter that Patience is autistic when the retired police officer Douglas Gilmour barges in. Douglas is Patience’s godfather, and is worried about her even though she came in for questioning voluntarily.

Baxter allows Bea to talk to Patience, who eventually admits that she was looking for a cigar at the parking lot but couldn’t find one. A cigar was present at the death of Neal Jamieson, and Patience says she also saw one in photos of Brendan Clark’s death. She was a patient of Clark’s as a child and counted his books to avoid speaking to him, so she knows his office intimately and noticed the cigar in the photos. And Clark didn’t smoke – Patience is sensitive to tobacco, since her mother who left when she was 6 was a smoker.

Since the deaths of the three psychiatrists – Chopra, Jamieson, and Clark –  have some many similarities, where was the cigar at Chopra’s death? Jake and Bea go to look, while Jake argues that Patience is “temperamentally unsuited” for police work and Bea defends her. Bea finds a cigar in the tailpipe of Chopra’s car.

The tailpipe is in a blind spot on the parking lot’s CCTV, so the detectives examine a neighboring building’s cameras to find footage of a hooded figure placing the cigar in it. They then notice the same figure in different footage from the parking lot, seemingly carrying the money Chopra withdrew just before his death.

Given Patience’s impressive deductions, Bea wants her officially on her team – but Baxter tells her she must first ask Patience’s godfather. Douglas explains that he’s worried the stress of a case will lead Patience to burn out. But immersing herself in police investigations helped her open up as a child, after she accidentally found some of her father’s case files and became engrossed. After Douglas moved from active policing to the Criminal Records Office, Patience’s father had him take her on as an intern; that’s how she got her current job there. Her father was determined to prove psychiatrists like Clark wrong and help Patience live independently. He eventually died while on duty in a traffic accident, leaving Douglas to support her.

Once Douglas consents, Bea still has to convince Patience to help her – and Patience says no, because she fears the loss of consistency and routine. Bea gets advice from the leader of Patience’s autism support group, Billy Thompson. He suggests that Bea appeal to Patience’s insatiable need to solve puzzles, so Bea mentions to Patience that the cases are still unsolved.

Sure enough, Patience digs into the files and discovers a commonality between the three dead psychiatrists: Belize. The country is a natural source of the drug that induces a suggestive state and probably was used to kill the men; a travel guide to Belize is visible on the shelves of Clark’s office in the photos of his death; Jamieson posted about a trip to Belize on social media; and Chopra had vaccines consistent with guidelines for Belize, as Patience discovered in records from when he testified in court.

Bea and Jake have also closed in on Belize, discovering that the cigars left at all three death scenes come from that country and are only sold in York at a shop run by Belizean immigrants. They also suspect voodoo might be involved in the deaths, since both the drug and cigars are common elements of voodoo rituals.

Bea and Patience visit the medical company where Jamieson works – which also organized a conference in Belize at the time Jamieson visited the country. James Cooper is in charge of events for the company and organized and attended the conference. He says the company’s lawyers will have to weigh in before they can share a list of people who attended – Bea and Patience suspect Chopra and Clark are on it. Before leaving, Patience asks about Cooper’s real name, given his accent, and he admits over Bea’s embarrassment that he anglicized it.

Later, Bea guesses the Spanish original: Jaime Cobre. Under that name, he’s in the criminal system for soliciting sexual services. Prostitution is legal in Belize, which suggests he and the sex addict Jamieson might have partaken while there. 

Meanwhile, Patience has shared with Billy her frustration with the medical company’s lawyers’ stalling, even though she’s not supposed to discuss the case. Billy’s girlfriend is a hacker, and she hacks the company’s servers to get the list of conference attendees, as well as Cooper’s email to find a boat company charter from Belize. Cooper rented the boat – and the other passengers listed are the three dead psychiatrists. But Cooper had hacking alert software, so he probably knows the police are onto him now.

Setting aside that such extrajudicial hacking is inadmissible, Bea and Jake rush to Cooper’s apartment. He’s standing on the edge of the roof. Jake rushes to talk him down – but he jumps. He survives, but barely.

Bea brings Patience into Cooper’s apartment to look for clues. The telltale cigar is found, marking Cooper’s death as related to the three psychiatrists – although it didn’t take place on a Friday or the fourth of the month, as theirs did. Perhaps the killer knows the police are onto them and so is moving faster.

Cooper was getting ready to leave the country, as cash and a passport make clear. Patience notices a piece of furniture is only half dusted, suggesting Cooper’s cleaner was distracted – and indeed, he let in a cleaner just before he jumped, not that the police know that.

Fingerprints from his apartment match those of Yemaya Vasquez, the cleaner at the hotel where Clark died, who fled Bea and Jake. She was fingerprinted when Clark died, since she was there when his body was found. But she just quit her job at the hotel, which only has a contact for her landlady.

The landlady’s voicemail is in Spanish, but Patience translates it for Bea and Jake. Her number is the same as that of the cafe where the Belizean cigars are sold.

The landlady tells the detectives that Yemaya flew back to Belize, but they search the cafe and apartment above it and catch Yemaya when she tries to flee.

The U.K. consulate in Belize shares information on Yemaya. She reported her sister Violeta missing at the same time as the psychiatrists and Cooper were in Belize for their conference. Violeta had just applied for a student visa to the U.K.; perhaps Yemaya used it instead.

Yemaya’s landlady apologizes to the detectives for lying to them; she thought they were immigration enforcement, and Yemaya was about to leave the country anyway. She explains that a voodoo altar in Yemaya’s lodgings is to a god of revenge, particularly for violence against women. The cigar is a common offering to him, and both Fridays and the number four are significant to him. A matchbook on the altar has a trace of blood.

Yemaya explains that it is her sister’s blood, and was found on the boat from which Violeta disappeared. Violeta was a hostess at the conference and Cooper asked her to come on the boat to serve drinks. She was only 17 and naive; she never got off the boat.

Yemaya came to the U.K. to avenge her sister, and found work at a hotel, where she eventually recognized Jamieson. He confessed everything under the influence of the drug Yemaya used to kill everyone. The psychiatrists raped Violeta, and then Cooper pushed her off the boat so she wouldn’t tell anyone. No one else stopped him.

Yemaya found the other perpetrators through a Whatsapp group on Jamieson’s phone. The money she had them all withdraw was sent to her grandmother in Belize.

Case closed, thanks in large part to Patience. Bea takes her to lunch in the police cafeteria as thanks – even though Patience isn’t a fan of eating with other people.