A Racing Certainty

The episode picks up the pursuit begun in Armed and Dangerous. The squad's concern is now the murder of one of their own, and the listings phrase it two ways: Bulman and Willis go under cover to flush out the person who killed their colleague at a racetrack, and the squad, tracking leads, finds itself involved in the sport of kings and the gangsters running it. The racetrack is Newmarket, so the second half of the two-parter moves from the road where the first began to the racing world.

The billed cast carries the earlier episode's people forward. Maurice Colbourne returns as John Rutter, Rachel Davies as Jean Rutter, Ken Kitson as Joe Green and Jonathan David as Doug Smithers, and that continuity is what ties the two transmissions into one story rather than two episodes sharing a theme. Barrie Houghton and Karen Mayo-Chandler play Harry and Lucy Degas, the racing-world figures at the centre of the second half, and James Copeland plays Willie Mauchlin. Pamela Sholto appears as Mrs Casey, which places the wife of the officer who left the series the previous week in the episode immediately after her husband's exit.

The case is race fixing: a group hedging the odds by ensuring the outcome of a racehorse meeting is in their favour, with the death of the squad's colleague tied to it. Bulman and Willis go under cover inside the racing world to reach them, which is the series' standard method applied to a new setting, and the treatment of the racing world is unsentimental, the Degas family being presented as organised crime operating inside a legitimate sport. The victim being one of their own gives the story a stronger emotional stake than the series usually sets up, and the Newmarket case run from London is the Inter City format working as designed.

The consequence carried out of the episode is the more significant thing. A later episode, Clowns Don't Cry, opens with Bulman under investigation by A10 for manslaughter, and that arises from the events here. The resolution leaves Bulman facing an inquiry into a death that occurred during his own case, which is the strongest piece of documented continuity between two episodes of this season that are not themselves a two-parter. It is also where the series shows the cost of Bulman's methods: the officer who has spent the run bending rules in the field is placed under formal investigation as a result of his own work.

The identity of the killer, the method of the killing and the fate of the Degas operation are not recorded in any source consulted, and the ending is not stated. What the sources establish is that the two-part pursuit begun with the ambush is resolved with the squad under cover in the racing world. The episode contains several in-jokes, among them a use of Ride of the Valkyries and a reference to the title A Swift and Evil Rozzer, which became the title of a Series 5 episode two years later. A production consequence of the racetrack shoot is also on record: several passers-by can be seen looking curiously into the camera during the racing scenes. The guide singles out the hospital scenes as exciting and the characterisation as strong, and warns that little can be said about the story without spoiling it.