A World Full Of Rooms

A prostitute has been badly beaten, and everyone in the know reads it the same way: a warning. The message is aimed at Jackie Frankitt, a hard man currently doing time, because whoever ordered the beating could not reach him and settled for somebody near him instead. Watt has to unpick the assault while the protection racket that runs this part of town watches him work.

The episode is built from the usual ingredients of street-level policing: reluctant witnesses, closed doors, and the sense that half the people being questioned know the answer already. Watt works with Sgt. Evans, while PW Det. Con. Donald, PC Snow and Aubrey Richards's detective sergeant do the legwork around them. The more interesting company sits on the other side of the questions. Mollie Frankitt, played by Elizabeth Seal, Sylvie Ashford (Jennifer Wilson), Charley Smith (Milton Johns) and Jake Rollins (Keith Marsh) all circle the case with their own reasons for saying nothing. And nobody will say the racket's name into a police tape recorder, which is the real problem: finding the one person brave or desperate enough to break the silence.

Elwyn Jones and Allan Prior wrote it, and Paul Ciappessoni directed. There is a neat restraint to the whole thing, the violence kept off-screen too. We hear about the beating rather than watch it, and the drama settles into the silences of people deciding whether to talk. It is police work as it usually happens: slow, awkward, and full of people choosing their words.

It is a modest, well-made episode, and Frank Windsor carries it without fuss. The real subject is consequence, a woman hurt because of who she knew, and a neighbourhood that would rather live with the racket than answer for it. Nothing gets fixed. The episode just stops, which feels about right. It is the sort of episode that lingers because of what it leaves out.