Pay Off

Carter fancies Shirley Glass, and she asks him a favour any copper should have seen coming: find her partner Eddie, who has gone missing. Carter, being Carter, says yes. The errand turns into a murder inquiry when Eddie, a small-time crook, turns up well and truly dead, and the first thing the episode does is hand its likeable copper a corpse tied to the woman he is sweet on.

Shirley works as a croupier for Arnold Drake, a smooth operator whom Regan and Haskins suspect of large-scale villainy. The police angle is obvious and unlovely: Shirley and Carter become bait, and their feelings are the line on the hook. The trap goes in, and the professional pressure lands squarely on Carter's private worry. Regan, for once, is almost gentle with him, which is its own kind of warning. When the guv'nor stops needling you, you are either earning his respect or his pity, and the episode keeps you guessing which.

But what carries the hour is the collision of the two. Geraldine James makes Shirley more than the plot's lever, and Dave King's Drake is smooth in exactly the way the title suggests, all pay-off and no honesty. Ken Kitson, George Harris, John Alkin, Bill Armour and Anthony Douse fill out the murk, with Thaw and Morgan working their usual grooves around Waterman's Carter.

Peter Hammond and Ian Kennedy Martin wrote it, and Douglas Camfield directs with a cold eye, letting the club lights and the car parks do the talking.

It is a solid, grim hour that does not flinch from the cost of the job. The title works both ways: a payoff is what Drake trades in, and a payoff is what Carter gets for his trouble. His heart and the case file end up the same document, and the show knows it. The clubs do their business in cash and charm, and the police do theirs in the corners the clubs forgot to sweep.