The Gold Robbers

- Season 1

(1969)

A bullion aircraft, carrying five-and-a-half million pounds of gold bars approaches an airfield in the South of England. Before the day is out. Det. Chf Supt Cradock will find himself assigned to track down the team behind 'the crime of the century'.

From his temporary headquarters on Westmarsh Airfield, Detective Cradock begins his unenviable task of discovering how the robbery was executed.

Pressurised by his superiors - not to mention the Home Office - Cradock must make his move and deliver the marksman who shot at the tyres of the police car escorting the bullion.

'Hello, Tango One To Base. Hello Dave.' Cradock is certain that the voice who mimicked a police operator's relay call belongs to Barry Porter, a second-rare conman. But how can he prove it?

Did someone pay £30,000 to spring a convict to help pull off the job? It seems a high price to pay - but death is an even higher price, and the criminal fraternity aren't always to be relied on.

Cradock finds a weak line in the bullion robber's armour. Peter Conroy, the man who drove the escape, has run to Austria to evade arrest. But he left his wife behind - and Cradock can use her.

A ray of hope - or just another tough nut to crack? Tom Goodwin, the pilot who flew the plane, appears to want to 'opt out' and is prepared to spill the beans. But can Cradock really trust the man's evidence?

A chance to get on the robber's trail - or yet another clever counter-bluff? Cradock must decide if the outcome of a meeting is worth the risk of wading even deeper into the depths of the underworld.

A major turning point at last. Harry Oscrost, a brilliant accountant and paymaster to the gold robbers, is desperate when violence enters his safe suburban retreat and threatens his family. Perhaps with a little squeeze.

Why should an informer put the finger on the Hon. Timothy Fry, DSO, who was found smuggling a girl out of the country. Of more interest to Cradock is how is the Hon. Timothy mixed up in the bullion snatch?

'Mr Big arrested in Paris' reads the newspaper headline. Cradock has got his man - the brain behind the gold robbery. But he knows all to well that there's someone bigger still at large and sets out to find him.

The net tightens. The hunter closes in on his prey, but Nechros swallows the bait and not the hook, and Cradock comes under further pressure by powerful men behind his superiors.

In spite of warnings to the contrary, Cradock closes in for the kill. He knows his man and is determined to get him at any cost. But his final filing leads him into deadly territory.