Enough of Ghosts

"Enough of Ghosts" begins with Willie Caine doing the hardest part of the job, telling Tom Elliot's parents their son is dead. He comes back from that visit considering leaving the unit, and the episode lets that sit without rushing him. Few spy shows would trust a scene that quiet. It is the right way to open the hour, because everything Caine does afterwards carries the weight of that doorstep.

Then Wellingham vanishes. The Permanent Under-Secretary of State disappears in Brussels on his way to NATO Headquarters, and Burnside has two problems at once. The man must be found. And there is the file: Burnside lent Wellingham a top secret document on SIS cooperation with South Africa, a subject against government policy, and it is sitting in the safe of the office Wellingham no longer occupies. Even if the man turns up safe, the paperwork may finish him.

Burnside sends both remaining Sandbaggers to Brussels, directly against the Deputy Chief's orders to send one, and works with their German counterparts to find whoever took him. The Germans are helpful and still not helpful enough, and identifying the group takes most of the hour. The chase itself is workmanlike, which fits the tone: terrorism here is a problem to be managed, not a spectacle to be enjoyed. The South Africa file is the quiet centre of the whole business. While the Sandbaggers chase terrorists, Burnside is trying to work out how to get a piece of paper out of a locked safe before anyone asks where it came from. That is the show's sense of proportion, and it is correct.

Ian MacKintosh wrote it, Peter Cregeen directed. Roy Marsden anchors it as Burnside, with Ray Lonnen's Willie Caine, Richard Vernon's 'C', Jerome Willis's Matthew Peele and Alan MacNaughtan's Sir Geoffrey Wellingham around him. Michael Cashman plays Mike Wallace, Edith MacArthur Lady Wellingham, Bob Sherman Jeff Ross, Jana Shelden Karen Milner and Peter Laird Edward Tyler.

Caine's scenes with the Elliot parents are the best in the episode, grief handled without melodrama. The rest is a police procedural wrapped in Whitehall manners, and the combination suits this series better than any amount of shooting.