Protection

A protection racket runs on fear and paperwork. The fear is easy to spot: shopkeepers paying up and looking away, pretending the money keeps trouble off their street. The paperwork is what Maggie Forbes has to dig for. She investigates a racket that has its hooks into the neighbourhood, and the episode is at its best when it shows how these things actually work: the careful pressure, the plausible deniability. The people paying are somehow made to feel to blame for their own protection. Racketeers don't need guns if they have the accounts; the invoice is mightier than the cosh. Protection money is a tax on fear, and the fear is the product being sold.

The enquiry pulls in the usual team, Russell, Fenton, Croft and Barratt, gathering evidence and identifying the players. But the case turns on the people around the racket, and the supporting cast does the heavy lifting of making the neighbourhood feel lived in: Maria, June Stafford, Harry Warren, and a pianist whose music hints at where the money flows. The pathologist's report adds its own weight to the file, because a racket that starts with threats rarely stays there. Carol Wiseman directs with a light hand, letting the menace build in conversation rather than confrontation.

Roger Marshall and Terence Feely wrote it. Jill Gascoine leads as Maggie Forbes, with William Marlowe's Russell, Derek Thompson's Fenton, Brian Gwaspari's Croft and Paul Moriarty's Barratt. Gara Granda plays Maria, Judy Loe is June Stafford, Tony Selby plays Harry Warren, Mike Hall is the pathologist and Tony Lee plays the pianist.

It's a methodical hour that rewards close attention, because the clues are in the details: the invoices, the quiet conversations. And the most frightening thing about the racket is how normal it looks from the outside. What stays with you is the everydayness of it: the dread is all in the details, and the details are all ordinary.