Cat Among The Pigeons

John Watt does not believe in self-made men until he has seen the accounts. Jeremy Styles is a successful businessman who started with nothing, and that alone is enough to put him on the squad's radar. Watt's theory is blunter: Styles is secretly in business with a villain named Sam Daniels, and the pair of them have been partners in crime while Styles kept the respectable front. The success story, in Watt's telling, is the crime. Nobody gets that rich by being lucky, in Watt's world, and this is a world where Watt is usually right.

But Watt does not want a quick arrest. He wants to dismantle the man's version of himself, and the squad fans out around him, Evans, Snow and Nesbitt doing the unglamorous work while Cullen keeps an eye on the politics. There are no flashy raids here, no dramatic entrances, just legwork and patience. Richard Shaw's Styles is smooth enough to make you half-believe the whole thing is a misunderstanding, which is exactly the point of the performance.

The supporting cast gives the case its texture. Roy Purcell's Doctor Chambers, Jerold Wells's Timmy Logan, Rio Fanning's Harry Brent and Patsy Trench's Anne Collinson all drift through the businessman's world, each carrying a piece of the puzzle. It is the sort of episode where the money trail matters more than the bodies, and the bodies, in this one, stay off-screen.

Robert Barr and Elwyn Jones wrote it, Lennie Mayne directed, and Mayne keeps the whole thing deliberate and patient, matching Watt's mood.

There is something satisfying about a case built on suspicion rather than evidence, and the episode leans into that. Watt is asking how a man rises from nothing without stepping on anyone, and the answer, when it comes, is the sort that makes the whole building wince. Success built on sand, and a chief superintendent with a shovel.