Got Him!

The tip lands with Grant first: Maurice Roach, a villain with a reputation, is planning a housebreaking. Before anyone can move on it, the housebreaking has already happened. Mr and Mrs Tegman, a Swiss businessman and his wife, have been found at their home in Woodstock Green, robbed and tied up. Housebreaking is a crime of planning, and Roach is a planner; the timing of the tip and the timing of the job sit close enough to be uncomfortable. And it is the kind of job that makes a family's home feel like a crime scene for years afterwards. The niece adds the one useful detail: she saw a man loitering by the gates, hanging about long enough to be remembered.

Elwyn Jones and Arnold Yarrow wrote this one, Lennie Mayne directed, and the episode is a tidy exercise in joining dots. Roach's plans, the Tegmans' house and the man at the gate all have to line up, and the question is whether they belong to the same story. Grant and Hawkins work the link; Watt keeps the pressure on from above; Lincoln and Pearson do the knocking on doors. There are no theatrics, just statements, timings and the slow work of making a case that will stand up. Robert Gillespie is Dicky West, one of those characters who always seems to know something; Maurice O'Connell plays Roach with the confidence of a man who thinks his plans are sound. Reg Lloyd and Patricia Prior are the Tegmans, and Adrienne Burgess is their niece Lucille.

The title is a promise, and the episode is honest about the wait. Got him is the shout that comes at the end of the work, not the start. Watching the team earn it is the point. It is solid, unshowy police television, the kind the show could produce in its sleep, and that is a compliment rather than a complaint.