Company Business

Platinum is not the sort of thing you expect to walk out of a fertiliser factory, yet somebody at Nitro Sync Chemicals has managed it three times. Three thefts is not carelessness; it is a routine, and routines can be studied. Watt and Hawkins get the case, which means spending their time inside a company where the staff are too polite to be guilty and the management too embarrassed to be helpful.

But the change of scenery does the partnership good. Instead of doorsteps and back alleys they get offices and canteens, and the investigation turns on who knew when the platinum was there to be taken. The suspects queue up politely for interview, each one certain it must be somebody else. William Dexter plays Bill Calwell, with Donald Douglas as Fisher, Wendy Gifford as Ruth Kemp, Penelope Lee as Linda Calwell, Frederick Hall as Archie Bates and Andrew Jack as Radley, giving Watt and Hawkins a full cast of possible thieves to work through. David Allister's Sgt. Jackson and Susan Tebbs's PW Det. Con. Donald keep the office end moving.

John Elliot and Elwyn Jones wrote it, and Gerald Blake directed. The episode is a reminder that the show can do white-collar territory without losing its bite. There are no gunfights and no chases. The drama is a patient pair of detectives talking their way through a workforce of people who would all rather be doing something else, and that is quietly satisfying in its own right. The case never leaves the building, and the building never stops being politely in the way.

It's a quiet episode, but the patience of it is the point. Watt and Hawkins keep asking, keep coming back, until the company's good manners run out. Somewhere among the polite faces is the man who thought three missing deliveries would go unnoticed. The platinum was only ever the excuse. The conversation was the entertainment.