Spit And Polish

A series of assaults on women has the area on edge, and the case finally gets a grip when one of the victims fights back. That is the moment the trail starts. These investigations often need exactly that: one refusal, and the pattern begins to show itself. The attacks have been going on long enough to frighten people, which is what makes the breakthrough feel earned.

Two details keep the squad busy. There is a white car that keeps turning up near the scenes. But the garage of an elderly lady turns out to matter more than anyone expected. The episode is built from that kind of small, stubborn fact, the sort that looks like nothing until it is everything. The assault victim who fought back is the centre of it, and the episode is careful to keep her a person rather than a clue. The pattern is ugly and the details are small, and the two make uncomfortable company. Stratford Johns' Barlow runs the operation with Frank Windsor's Watt, while Norman Bowler's Chief Insp. Hawkins and David Lloyd Meredith's Det. Sgt. Evans handle the day-to-day. Terence Rigby's PC Snow and Thomas Ellice's PC Knowles do the legwork, Leslie Southwick's Insp. Parks keeps the local side in line, and Jenny Hanley's Sara Jamieson, Peter Copley's Brigadier Jamieson and Gordon Reid's Tony move through the story around them.

Elwyn Jones wrote it, Leonard Lewis directed, and it opened the new season on 13 September 1972.

'Spit and polish' is the right name for it. The episode is about the unglamorous labour of a patient inquiry, the waiting and the looking, the asking of the same question twice, and it trusts that to hold an audience. It does. Witnesses are talked to twice. Sightings of the white car are logged, and the old garage gets its turn under the lamp. There is no flashy trick to the resolution, just the accumulated weight of detail, which is the honest way to catch a man who has been careful.