Who Wants Pride...?

Dynamite has gone missing from a quarry, and it has landed in the hands of an explosives expert who is using it to blow open armoured cars. That is the situation Barlow inherits: a gang with professional firepower and a habit of choosing their own targets. Stolen dynamite is the sort of headline detail that could carry a lesser episode on noise alone. This one is quieter about it. The trick is that Barlow cannot simply wait to catch them at it. He has to work out where the next job will be before the gang get there themselves. Armoured cars are the target, and dynamite is the argument, which gives every guess Barlow makes a price.

It is deduction under pressure, with a countdown nobody can see. The team builds a picture of the gang's habits, their routes and their appetites, and hopes the picture will say where the money moves next. There is a nice tension between the violent material and the quiet police work. The dynamite is all flash. The investigation is all patience, and the outcome hangs on which of them wins. The episode is built on that arithmetic: what the gang needs, when they need it, and which of their habits gives them away.

Robert Barr and Elwyn Jones wrote it, and Roger Jenkins directed. Stratford Johns is Barlow, Frank Windsor is Watt and Norman Bowler is Hawkins. David Lloyd Meredith is Evans, Susan Tebbs is Donald and Michael Gaunt is Det. Con. Timms. Ray Lonnen plays Jim O'Donnell, Jess Conrad is David Marks, William Wilde is Tom Patterson and Jeannette Wild is Betty Patterson.

Pride is in short supply all round. The gang cannot afford a slip, and the police are working off a guess that has to be right. There is a particular pleasure in watching a team assume the criminals are clever, because it makes the police cleverer. And when the guess is right, it is satisfying in a way a chase never quite is.