Walkout

Mrs Van Bueren, a middle-aged widow, arrives home to find that she has been burgled. Fortunately the thieves have not taken her jewels. She enlists Ken’s help to guard them. Ken takes away the jewellery box, full of tiaras and necklaces, to store it in CBS’ safe. Meanwhile, Mr Fraser, a rep from a security firm, is showing Harry his company’s products – a mugger-proof briefcase and a safe alarm. Harry is not impressed and sends Fraser away with a flea in his ear... but not before he has seen Mrs Van Bueren’s jewellery.

Rocky is behaving very strangely: his heart isn’t in his work any more and he hasn’t turned up for work. He has started wearing aftershave and he has bought a clapped-out Ford Capri with a musical horn, a noisy exhaust and furry seat-covers. All this is because he has fallen madly in love with Melanie King, a demure cashier at his bank. Harry has noticed that Rocky isn’t really concentrating and is “on another planet”, so he gives him an easy job: guarding a sculpture exhibition consisting of piles of bin-bags arranged “artistically” in the grounds of an old house!

When Alex goes to the office late one night to phone her friend in Australia from the office phone, she happens to see Rocky leaving, carrying a bag. The following morning Ken discovers that Mrs Van Bueren’s jewellery is missing from the safe. Harry wonders where Rocky has got the money from for the car and to take Melanie to expensive restaurants. Things look black when Alex happens to mention seeing Rocky the night before. Ken doesn’t want to believe that Rocky could have taken the jewels and tactfully questions him, but all the time Harry wants to be less subtle and tries to accuse Rocky straight out. Harry follows Rocky and sees him go into a jewellers to enquire about lockets.

Rocky arranges to meet Melanie for lunch but she is waiting at the wrong restaurant. Rocky thinks she has stood him up. Very dejected, he goes to drown his sorrows at “The Drum”. When he eventually gets back to work, Harry reads the riot act: he complains that Rocky has been absent when he should have been at work, he’s drunk, he’s been seen leaving the office at dead of night just before the jewels were stolen and then visiting a jeweller’s. Rocky is furious when Harry accuses him of being a thief, and a heated argument ensue. Rocky resigns... but Harry tells him that he is sacked. Alex overhears all this. Rocky storms off in his car, nearly knocking Ken off his bike in the process. Ken talks to Smudger at “The Drum” and learns that Rocky had been in there earlier on, drinking heavily and complaining that “everything’s gone wrong”. He finds an expensive golden locket in Rocky’s car. Meanwhile Harry learns that Rocky has serious money problems: he has run up a £300 overdraft, he hasn’t paid his poll tax, he is trying to sell his motor bike and his landlady is about to evict him because he owes two months’ rent.

Alex tells Charlie and Bernie, two of the CBS guards what Harry had done to Rocky. When they confront him and he denies that he has sacked Rocky, she decides to take matters into her own hands and organises a walkout to protest his innocence. After hearing what she has to say, all the CBS guards decide unanimously to go on strike, leaving Harry in charge of “Jaws”, the company’s fierce alsatian guard dog!

Harry’s troubles are only just beginning. Mrs Van Bueren is livid when she hears that the jewels have been stolen while CBS were supposed to be looking after them and Harry has to promise that Ken will investigate the theft as she does not want to involve the police. With all the staff on strike and a large backlog of cases, Harry reluctantly decides to subcontract all his work to a rival firm run by Mr Holden. He is horrified to discover that Mr Potts, Holden’s chief investigator, is the man who claimed to be a security rep called Mr Fraser! Potts reveals that he broke into Harry’s safe by recording the clicks that the lock had made when Harry was opening it to demonstrate the safe alarm. Holden’s are acting for their client, Mr Van Bueren! It turns out that Mrs Van Bueren is not a “poor defenceless widow” but is in fact Mr Van Bueren’s ex-wife. Her claim to Ken that the jewellery had belonged to her mother is a lie: in fact it has been in Mr Van Bueren’s family for many generations. Harry decides that he will tell Mrs Van Bueren that CBS can no longer undertake to find her jewellery and that she should contact Holden’s.

Harry is feeling very guilty that he accused Rocky of the theft unjustly and then sacked him. He keeps trying to write him a letter of apology and leaves the final, half-finished attempt in Alex’s typewriter. Rather late in the day, he finally realises that finding Rocky and giving him his job back is more important than Van Bueren, Holden and the guarding of the bin-bag sculptures. He and Ken talk to Melanie’s father and learn that she has gone off with Rocky, possibly to Sowerton where the family used to go for holidays. Harry and Ken do indeed find them in a tent by the side of a lake and overhear Melanie nagging Rocky. On the journey back, she continues to moan about Rocky’s failings and starts trying to run his life. “Get me out of this,” Rocky begs Harry. Back at the office, Ken lectures Alex, telling her how irresponsible she has been in getting involved when he and Harry could have sorted everything out without her interference. She apologises very contritely. Despite Ken’s anger with Alex, it looks as if secretly he rather respects her loyalty to Rocky.

At the sculpture park, the organiser, Mr Fenton, is preparing the welcome the press, the critics and the mayor. But while no-one was on guard, someone has vandalised the site – there are bin-bags everywhere. Ken and Charlie hastily rearrange the bags into “artistic” shapes such as a smiling face and a ship. Mr Fenton and the artist, Don Kellet, are horrified but the critics love it. Much to Ken’s amusement, Fenton spouts a load of pseudo-artistic clap-trap about symbolism and inner meanings of the shapes!

Harry offers Rocky his job back, pays his outstanding rent and agrees to put him up until he can find somewhere else to live. He also offers to pay off his overdraft. Alex finds Harry’s half-finished letter of apology and shows it to Rocky, much to Harry’s embarrassment.

Notes and episode list © Martin Underwood, 1999

Page last modified: 17 December 2008, 23:49