Surveillance

Barlow is sure of his ground: a gang of safe breakers is at work, and the squad has the inside knowledge to catch them at it. Intelligence-led operations always look good on paper. But the trouble begins when the paper meets the pavement. The safe breakers are professionals, which makes the intelligence all the more precious.

The move to make the arrests goes wrong in the way these things do, and PC Snow ends up with a gun pulled on him. It is a short, sharp reminder that the men doing the watching are the ones who pay for the information the senior ranks hold, and Terence Rigby plays Snow's moment with the stillness of a man who has been here before and does not like it any better. Snow's narrow escape is the moment the episode has been heading for, and it does not waste it. The gun changes everything about the day, and the change is felt for the rest of the episode. The rest of the running time is the squad picking up the pieces of the operation, working out what they still have and what the gang now knows they have. Frank Wylie's Frank Martin, Jon Laurimore's William Chalmers, Elaine Baillie's Lucie, Nigel Humphreys' Terry Condon and Dennis Handby's Fuller make up the crew the squad has been tracking.

Stratford Johns' Barlow runs the case with Walter Gotell's Chief Constable Cullen and David Lloyd Meredith's Det. Sgt. Evans around him, and Thomas Ellice's PC Knowles shares the footwork with Snow. Robert Barr and Elwyn Jones wrote it, Pennant Roberts directed, and it went out on 27 September 1972.

The title promises the quiet end of police work, and the episode delivers it, right up until the quiet stops. Watching and waiting are the real business of the job, and the show has always understood that better than most. It is the kind of episode that rewards patience, and viewers who give it some are repaid.