Hit and Run

Carter's wife Alison is killed on her way to post the football pools, knocked down by a driver who doesn't stop. The whole episode turns on a coat. Alison had borrowed Judy Grinden's, and the man behind the wheel saw the coat and never looked at the face. Judy, the French mistress at the school, understands at once that she was the intended victim, and she goes on the run before the news has even settled.

The reason for the mistake comes out gradually. Somewhere in those school trips to France, a smuggling arrangement had grown, and someone wanted out of it. The gang's answer was a hire car and a driver. Alison simply had the bad luck to be wearing the coat. Regan has to find Judy before Reg Crofts, the gang boss, does. And Judy is not minded to trust anyone, least of all the police.

What the episode gets right is that it doesn't rush past the grief. George Carter takes the news the way anyone takes that news, then carries on, because that is the job and the job is all he has left. Waterman plays the aftermath with his face rather than his fists, which is the harder trick. The chase stays urgent without ever feeling like an excuse to forget her.

Roger Marshall and Ian Kennedy Martin wrote it, Mike Vardy directed. John Thaw is Regan and Dennis Waterman is Carter, with Garfield Morgan as Haskins. Sheila Ruskin gives Judy a hunted, nervy quality, and Patrick Troughton is a properly menacing Reg Crofts. Gary Waldhorn plays Alan Fowler, Stephanie Turner is Alison, and Margaret Whiting, Michael Sheard and James Snell fill out the rest. Michael Sheard, in particular, makes the schoolmaster Mr Penketh count in a couple of scenes.

Even by Sweeney standards, killing a woman over a borrowed coat is petty. That pettiness is what makes it stick.