The Loneliness of the Long Distance Copper

The episode opens inside a prison and gives its first act to the escape. Loco Parmini, serving a long sentence, has spent his time planning rather than settling, and he breaks out using the prison library and a volume of the complete works of Oscar Wilde described in the reference account as an explosive one. The governor is presented as complacent and liberal-minded and the escape lands on him as a complete surprise. This is not a scramble: it is the execution of a plan, and the episode makes clear it has been prepared for a long time.

Parmini's purpose is revenge, and it is aimed at DCS Jack Lambie. His brother died during a Flying Squad raid Lambie had set up, and Parmini holds the commander personally responsible. The escape is designed to draw attention to him and to force the squad onto his trail: two of Lambie's men are shot during the pursuit and Parmini makes sure that happens, deliberately leaving a trail so that his recapture is handled by the Inter City Squad rather than by any other unit. He wants Lambie's people in the chase. That is the mechanism the title points at, because the pursuit is the plan.

His next move is personal. He goes to Lambie's house and takes Mrs Lambie hostage. Claire Lambie's presence in the household, established in the series opener a week earlier, is used here as leverage, and the quarry turns out to be after the squad's commander rather than the squad's resources. The investigation runs in parallel with the search, Bulman, Willis and Bennett working the trail while Lambie has to function as an officer with his wife's life in the hands of the man he is hunting, and the episode's tension comes from Lambie's inability to step back from a case aimed at him personally.

The story ends in a physical confrontation between the two men in one of the semi-derelict streets of early-1980s London, against a backdrop of burned-out cars and National Front graffiti. Lambie takes Parmini on himself rather than leaving it to his officers. It is a fight rather than a shooting, and the venue does the thematic work: this is a London of cleared ground and decayed streets and the reckoning happens in it. By the close Parmini is stopped, Lambie's authority is confirmed rather than damaged, and the squad's standing is underlined, since the man who came for the commander was handled by the unit the commander built.

Trevor Thomas plays Parmini as a man whose patience has been the whole of his imprisonment, and Frederick Treves, Bernard Brown, Roy Barraclough, Peter O'Farrell and Tim Condren fill out the criminal and professional relationships around the manhunt. Bulman is in his second episode at the rank of DCI and the senior investigating presence; Willis and Bennett do the ground work; John Ronane appears as Det. Insp. David Singer.

The episode is a revenge story rather than a mystery, and its shape is deliberate: the audience is told who is coming and why at the outset, and the interest lies in whether the squad can protect one of its own from a man who has planned for years. It is also the episode that establishes what a threat to the squad's commanding officer does to its working relationships, which is a subject Series 4 returns to.