Money, Money, Money

Eddie Monk did everything right, which is exactly what kills him. He'd gone straight years ago, he and his wife Anne were good friends to Regan, and then he wins the pools. The kind of money that should settle a man's life for good. Instead the win flushes out his past: eleven years earlier there was a robbery he was never caught for, and someone knows about it.

The blackmailer is Brian Fischer, played by Linal Haft, and he squeezes until Eddie can't bear it. A fight follows, and Eddie doesn't survive it. What could have stayed a routine shakedown becomes a murder, and Regan takes the loss personally because the victim was a friend. Working from leads supplied by a former gang member and Eddie's old mentor, he tracks Fischer down and gets his revenge, though the show being what it is, revenge here means an arrest rather than anything tidier. It's a cold kind of satisfaction, and the episode doesn't pretend otherwise. Haskins fares worse on his own patch, losing an important witness to whoever got to him first.

Trevor Preston and Ian Kennedy Martin wrote it and Sid Roberson directed. Edward Judd gives Eddie a real decency, which matters; if you don't believe in the man, the fall means nothing. Vilma Hollingbery is Anne, Tina Martin plays Kath Monk, and Garfield Morgan's Haskins has one of his rougher weeks. Glyn Owen appears as Wally Hough, Michael Culver as Dave Leeford and John Cater as Alec Slemen.

The title sounds jaunty and the story isn't. Money, Money, Money is about the past having a long memory and a price list, and it lets its saddest scene land without softening it. Regan's anger at the end is quieter than usual and better for it. Not many police shows of the period would let a pools win turn into a funeral.