Smokescreen

Two storylines run through 'Smokescreen', and both end in the same awkward place: somebody with a badge has to explain himself in public. Cowley, fresh from the Troika arrests, dies by his own hand shortly after an unproductive round of questioning by Eden in gaol, and the coroner's inquest that follows makes painful viewing for the Branch. In the other corner, Jordan watches Dr. Hamilton sail through vetting for a sensitive position even though everyone who matters agrees he is politically too far left. The warnings go in one ear. But the appointment goes through anyway.

The two threads share a sour theme. Procedure did everything it was supposed to do, and events declined to cooperate. Eden is left with the look of a man whose questions produced nothing but a body, and Jordan gets to watch institutional judgment get overruled by ambition or sheer momentum. Neither outcome is the one the manual predicted. The gaol cell and the committee room turn out to be running on the same logic, and neither one has a happy ending.

George Markstein wrote it, Jim Goddard directed. Wensley Pithey is Detective Supt. Eden, Derren Nesbitt Det. Chief Insp. Jordan, with Morris Perry's Charles Moxon, David Garth's Deputy Commander and Keith Washington's Det. Constable Morrissey. John Robinson plays Dr. Hamilton, Peggy Marshall his wife Zoe, Sandra Bryant Christine Morris, Edina Ronay Sonia Gibbs and Donald Pelmear the doomed Cowley.

The episode is at its best when it lets the mess sit there. Some deaths stay unresolved, and some appointments go through regardless of what the file says. The inquest is the point: a public reckoning that no amount of careful procedure can tidy away. The episode's sympathies are clear, and the smoke in the title drifts over the whole affair. It is content to leave it there.