Private Mischief

A worried barman asks Det. Supt. John Watt why a detective constable has been asking questions about him. It is the sort of small inquiry Watt could wave away, but he digs, and what he finds is alarming: the officer in question is no officer at all. A former policeman, apparently, is impersonating a CID constable and using the cover to harass the customers of a local pub, and the barman has the look of a man who has been watching the questions come closer.

But Barlow does not like the case. The deception is obvious, and he says so. Chief Constable Cullen, however, wants a case that will survive a lawyer's scrutiny, which means surveillance gear and patience, and Barlow agrees to proceed. The surveillance is the unglamorous heart of it: hours of tape for a case nobody wanted. Then Sgt. Richard Jackson is assaulted by the impostor and his accomplice, and shortly afterwards the impostor is found severely beaten and ends up in hospital. Suddenly Jackson, the victim of the first attack, is the man in the awkward position, and it is a position that could cost him his job.

Elwyn Jones wrote it, Ben Rea directed. Stratford Johns is Barlow, his scepticism as useful as ever, and Frank Windsor's Watt drives the early investigation. David Allister plays Sgt. Richard Jackson, the man caught in the middle, with Reginald Barratt as Insp. Saunders, Michael Beint as Fowler and Stephen John as Sgt. Davidson. Vincent Ball is Scotland, Jeremy Young Charleston and John Rolfe Dealey.

The neat trick is the aftermath. Most crime stories end when the impostor is caught; this one asks what happens next, and the answer is a sergeant in trouble through no fault of his own. The line between necessary police work and something more personal turns out to be thin enough to cross by accident. It is the kind of episode that ages well, because the question it asks never goes out of date.