Trust A Woman

The case starts small: a missing Swedish au pair. While the search goes on, Betty Donald picks up information about a local criminal named Christopher Connor, who appears to be arranging something. The something turns out to be a robbery, a jeweller's store, with Connor and three accomplices planning the job in detail. The au pair's disappearance is the kind of case that usually means a wasted journey, and that is exactly what makes it dangerous.

But Watt is not buying it. He does not trust Betty Donald's informer, and he smells a rat, and the episode runs on the friction between the informer's story and the superintendent's instincts. The informer talks; the question is what he is leaving out. The question is whether the doubt is professional caution or something less useful, and the answer only arrives as the robbery draws closer.

Robert Barr and Elwyn Jones wrote it, Ben Rea directed. Frank Windsor is Watt, Norman Bowler Hawkins, with David Allister as Sgt. Richard Jackson, David Lloyd Meredith as Sgt. Bob Evans and Susan Tebbs as Betty Donald, whose undercover work sets the whole thing moving. Imogen Hassall plays Molly Carson, Sean Caffrey Chris Conner, and a young Stephen Rea, years before The Crying Game, appears as Philip Conner. Guido Adorni is Marco and Jim O'Connor Jack Aldbridge.

Watt's stubborn suspicion keeps the tension alive right up to the jeweller's window, in a story where the missing au pair opens the door and the informer holds the key. It is a story about listening to the right person at the right time, and about the cost of trusting the wrong one. The title is aimed at the men who find it hard to trust the woman at the centre of the case, and the episode makes their mistake look entirely predictable.