Money For Sale

It starts with a car in a scrapyard, and Watt spots the connection fast. The car belongs to Alfred Felton, and Felton, it turns out, has done the one thing the men he works with will never forgive: he has disappeared with a suitcase full of money. Now he is running from the police and from his own gang at the same time, and the two chases keep tripping over each other. A suitcase full of somebody else's money is the fastest way to collect new enemies, and Felton has managed it in record time.

The episode understands that a man who has stolen from thieves is in the loneliest position in crime. Felton has cash, which means he has options, and he has enemies, which means he has no one to turn to. The squad's job is to find him before the gang does, and the investigation spreads out from the scrapyard into the wider hunt, with Watt and Hawkins coordinating, Evans on the ground, and Det. Chief Insp. Walker, played by Anthony Langdon, lending weight to the search. The supporting cast includes John White's Jack Powers, Paddy Joyce's Paddy Reilly and Jill Kerman's Sally Spencer, the faces Felton left behind.

Robert Barr and Elwyn Jones wrote it, David Sullivan Proudfoot directed. The title has a nice, bitter ring to it. Everything in Felton's world has a price, including the money he thinks he has got away with.

The episode is a solid, workmanlike chase, the kind the series knocked out with confidence. It does not reinvent anything, but it does not need to. A desperate man, a suitcase, and two sets of people who want him. That is a plot engine that has never worn out, and the show runs it well. There is no mystery about who the villains are, only about who reaches Felton first, and the show milks that race for all it is worth.