Grass

Robbie Ross takes a woman named Manda home for the night, and in the morning his informant book is gone. Names and numbers, all of it, stolen by a one-night stand. A detective's address book is a map of the people who trusted him, and this one is now in the hands of a stranger. But the consequences arrive fast. Thomas Duffy, one of the names in that book, is found murdered, with the word 'grass' spray-painted beside him. Before Robbie can decide what to do about it, a second informant is shot dead.

Ross has been carrying that book for years, and its loss is a professional catastrophe with a body count. He needs Jackie's help to get it back before anyone else dies, and he needs to keep the whole station from finding out how careless he's been. Jackie knows exactly what she's being asked to do, and she does it anyway. The episode runs on that double clock, and it keeps both ticking.

Glenn Chandler and David Kane wrote it, Ian Madden directed. John Michie does some of his best work here as a man watching his own career come apart, with Blythe Duff as the ally he doesn't deserve and Alex Norton as the boss who'd rather not know. Colin McCredie is Stuart Fraser. Pauline King plays Manda, Sally Howitt is Carla, Nicola Jo Cully is Meg, Gerry Lynch is Gavin, John Comerford is Hayne and Gavin Mitchell is Drydon.

Informant stories usually go one of two ways, and this one goes the nastier route. The damage starts at Ross's own front door, in a one-night stand that should have stayed a one-night stand. The word 'grass' in spray paint is the episode in miniature: crude, public and aimed at one man. The show rarely lets its detectives off the hook, and here Robbie's mistake costs other people their lives. He'll carry that. So will the audience.