Bad Apple

The rotten part of the barrel, this time, is the job itself. A group of CID men in an adjacent manor are on the take, running a protection racket that lets villains walk free after a token arrest. Haskins is the one who notices the pattern: crooks nicked, then released without charge, over and over. It smells like an arrangement, and arrangements in the Sweeney's world always end badly for somebody.

Regan picks up the trail in a way he is built for. Posing as an ex-con, he follows a lead to the Blue Parrot club, where the corruption has a home address: Detective Inspector Perraut and Detective Sergeant Jim Huke, taking their cut from the villains they are meant to lock up. Regan's answer is marked notes, paid out so the money is traceable, and before long he and Carter are undercover and in deep.

But the villains here carry warrant cards. The Sweeney's usual targets are the faces in the pubs and the runners in the cars; this time the faces belong to the job, and there is a particular chill in watching coppers do the arithmetic on what they can get away with. Nobody gets the benefit of the doubt, least of all the audience.

Roger Marshall and Ian Kennedy Martin wrote it, and Douglas Camfield directs. Norman Jones's Perraut has the sneer of a man who thinks he is untouchable, John Lyons's Huke is his willing bagman, and Sheila Brennan, Brian Poyser, Rod Culbertson, Colin Rix and David Miller fill out the club's clientele. Haskins, unusually, sets the ball rolling, and Garfield Morgan plays his unease beautifully.

It is a taut hour and a grim one, because the corruption is not a one-off. Regan and Carter clean the stable, and the job gets done, as it always does. Only this time the bad apples were on the payroll, and that taste is harder to wash out.