Rich Man, Poor Man

Two crimes, and on the face of it no reason they should share a city. An explosion at a tractor factory nearly kills one of the workers. And in a luxury apartment, a poor immigrant barber is bludgeoned to death. The flat is the puzzle before the murder even is: a man who cut hair for a living had no business standing on carpets like those.

Van der Valk goes looking for the link between the two. It's the sort of case that suits him, because nothing about it adds up politely. A factory accident reads as sabotage or grudge; a dead immigrant in rich rooms reads as something he stumbled into. Take them separately, each is solvable enough. Take them together and you get somewhere more interesting, because the gap between a tractor works and a penthouse is exactly where this city keeps its secrets. The episode shuttles between the two addresses until the distance between them starts to feel like the crime itself.

The title does half the work. Rich man, poor man, and the episode keeps asking which of them caused what. Money moves quietly in Amsterdam while men like the barber are counted by their absence, and Van der Valk's job is to follow whichever thread pulls tight first. He does it with his usual unhurried courtesy, which reads as patience to the rich and menace to everyone else.

David Butler wrote it with Nicolas Freeling, and Douglas Camfield directed. Barry Foster leads as Van der Valk, Michael Latimer plays Kroon and Susan Travers is Arlette. Roy Boyd appears as Anton Kovacic with Keith Buckley as Peko Kovacic, Jane Lapotaire as Elly, Stefan Gryff as Havranek, Christopher Benjamin as Mulder, David Webb as Leo and Beth Harris as Miss Texel.

An industrial bang and a quiet killing, joined by an investigation rather than an explanation. That's a satisfying shape for a mystery, and the episode fills it properly.