Latin Lady

Doctor Delacroix is leaving his clinic for the airport when a car full of thugs jumps him and takes his suitcase. A respectable gynaecologist, robbed in broad daylight. The fun begins with what he does next: he's remarkably reluctant to tell Regan and Carter what was in the case, and no wonder, because it turns out to be untaxed money he'd been hoping to smuggle out of the country.

So the Squad is chasing two things at once: the gang who did the robbing, and a victim who can't admit to being one without explaining himself. That little hypocrisy gives the episode its flavour. Regan has limited patience for men who want the law's help while hiding from its questions, and the investigation leads him to Christobel Delgado, the glamorous Latin lady of the title and girlfriend to one of the villains. Meg Davies plays her, and she's definitely not what she first appears to be, which is all the plot will usefully say about that. The glamour is the disguise, and the disguise is a good one.

Ted Childs and Ian Kennedy Martin wrote it and Peter Smith directed. Stuart Wilson plays Jimmy Knox, Donald Morley is Delacroix, Benjamin Whitrow turns up as Detective Chief Superintendent Braithwaite, James Warrior as DC Jellyneck, with Stephen Bent as Eddie Hibberd, Jack Carr as Pat Tyler and Sandra Payne as Meryl.

Latin Lady is a solid piece of series four: nothing that reinvents the show, but a proper crooked scheme with a doctor on the fiddle at one end and a robbery gone wrong at the other. The Sweeney always had time for victims who weren't, and Delacroix fits the house tradition nicely. A man of standing with a suitcase problem is exactly the sort of client Regan enjoys dismantling, and he takes his time over it, too.