'Maigret' Recap: Episode 2

Maigret airs Sundays at 8:00 pm on WTTW and is available to stream on the PBS app and wttw.com. Recap the previous and following episodes.
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Maigret and his team had in their custody one of the robbers who have been breaking into banks, and now they have lost him. Jacques Raison was taken from the hospital by his fellow robbers, dressed up as medics. Although Cavre was supposed to watch Raison, he abandoned his post to follow other leads. Nevertheless, Maigret takes the blame and is thus demoted, not saying anything when the prosecutor Kernavel promotes Cavre to lead the investigation into the robberies along with Maigret. Maigret’s team is upset – they prefer and trust Maigret more.

The “medics” who took Raison had medical masks on, so they can’t be identified in CCTV footage – but the driver of the ambulance who took them away can be seen unmasked. He is René Lussac, a helicopter pilot who was in a military unit with Nicholas Traude, whom Maigret believes is behind the robberies, having learned the tactics of Gustave Fernand while sharing a cell with him. 

Monique Delacroix, Raison’s pregnant fiancée, is also seen by the ambulance – no longer pregnant. She must be working with Traude, and pretended to be pregnant and Raison’s fiancée to scope out the hospital. She calls someone as the ambulance leaves, presumably letting them know Raison is leaving the hospital.

Maigret then turns his attention to the killing of the thief Honoré Cuendet. The object used to bludgeon him was made of expensive limestone, fragments reveal. Maigret now is certain that Cuendet broke into the mansion of Azhar Rafik after surveilling it from a hotel room for weeks, in order to steal a famous necklace Rafik had just bought. 

But Rafik is an asset for France’s national security in his native Syria, so Colonel Danet warns Maigret to stop investigating him. Maigret refuses. Kernaval, on behalf of Danet, also tells Maigret to drop the investigation into Cuendet and focus on the robberies – but she’s half-hearted, as she’s beginning to suspect Maigret may be right. 

Maigret has noticed that the guards on Rafik’s mansion go to their van to sleep once Rafik and his girlfriend Lida Buondonno have gone to sleep. He threatens to reveal this lapse in order to get the security firm to show his team the mansion’s CCTV. Despite the intense security on the home, the team realizes that the CCTV and locks were hacked so that someone – Cuendet – could have gotten in unseen during a specific time period.

Further proof of Maigret’s theory comes when Cuendet’s girlfriend, Evelyne, receives the necklace Rafik bought for Buondonno in the mail. Cuendet stole it from Buondonno’s bedside table while she and Rafik slept, mailed it in a ready envelope in a mailbox right outside Rafik’s home, and then was caught, pulled back inside, and murdered by Rafik.

The police have been surveilling Traude’s gang, and Cavre wants to arrest them. But Maigret wants to catch them in a robbery to have proof of their guilt. Kernaval is under intense pressure and needs results quickly, but she gives Maigret a day to figure out when and where the next robbery will be.

Mud found on Raison’s boots left in the hospital is from the Seine, and contains bits of rare plants that are only found at the Jardin des Plantes on the river. Maigret guesses the gang is planning to use the sewers, accessed from the river, to rob their next bank. The robbery of the jeweler, an apparent anomaly, was a distraction: it’s next door to the Paris water archives, and CCTV shows someone sneak into that building after its guards leave to confront the robbers at the jeweler. That person emerges soon afterward with rolled up plans: maps of the sewer system.

The detectives start monitoring any banks on a sewer line near the Jardin des Plantes. But the gang of robbers suddenly all move at once, seeming to be leaving Paris. Kernaval allows Cavre to move in and arrest them all – but they have all disappeared from their vans, leaving their phones behind.

Vibration sensors underneath one of the banks go off, so Maigret and his team visit – and arrest Traude and his gang. Maigret is confused by the absence of Lessac, the helicopter pilot, and Rosalie, Fernand’s wife, whom he believes is involved.

He realizes why they were missing when Fernand is brought to the prison infirmary with an ailment bad enough that he is to be airlifted out to a hospital. Rosalie leaves her house at the same time the helicopter goes to the prison, so Maigret follows her – and arrests Fernand as soon as Lessac lands the helicopter with him. Fernand agreed to teach Traude his robbery tactics while they shared a cell, in exchange for Traude sneaking Fernand out of prison. 

Maigret compiles his evidence that Rafik killed Cuendet and gives the file to Kernaval, who tells Colonel Danet that they have the evidence to convict Rafik, national security asset or not. She proposes a reconstruction, in which Maigret recreates the scene of the crime before Rafik and a lawyer, who can challenge the charges. Danet unhappily accepts it as the least bad option for protecting Rafik.

Maigret invites Cuendet’s girlfriend Evelyne and his mother Justine to Rafik’s house for the reconstruction. Rafik denies things, but is surprised to learn that Evelyne has his necklace, which she throws back at him – she doesn’t want it. Maigret outlines how Cuendet was hit with a limestone bust from behind, then turned over and hit five times in the face by a right-handed person – Rafik – and then five more times by a left-handed person – Buondonno. Buondonno runs upstairs to vomit as she watches Maigret’s team reenact the assault. Rafik then put Cuendet’s body in his car trunk and dumped it by the Seine. 

Rafik and Buondonno are arrested. Justine tells Maigret, who once arrested her son, that her home is always open to him.

Maigret returns home to exciting news: his wife Louise is pregnant, after a long period of trying to have a baby. But their celebration is interrupted when Maigret learns that Rafik and Buondonno have disappeared, probably to Syria. Maigret apologizes to Louise and goes out to meet Danet, who claims to have no part in the escape. But he does have the necklace that Evelyne gave back to Rafik, and gives it to Maigret as compensation for Evelyne and Justine. Maigret physically threatens Danet and then smashes the necklace on the ground – they already said they don’t want it, he says – leaving the colonel to scramble on his knees to pick up the diamonds.

Maigret returns home to celebrate with his wife, feeling slightly better.