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Kläre (Eva Brumby), part of the railway's cleaning personnel, has forgotten her bag on one of the trains she had to clean, and going back to fetch it she's shot dead. A man with a suitcase (Ralf Schermuly) is seen on the premises, but somehow he manages to give the police, who arrive on the scene promptly, a slip. However, he had to leave his jacket behind, and through this the police could track down his car, and through the car they could identify him as Scharwedder. Instead of bringing him in for questioning, inspector Derrick (Horst Tappert) insists on keeping the hands off him for the time being as he appears to be part of a smuggling ring. Unfortunately Richard (Jacques Breuer), son of the deceased, has gotten wind of the identity of the killer, and he wants to meet him face to face to ... not sure what, but anyways, Derrick's assistant Harry (Fritz Wepper) can intercept him just in time. Scharwedder as well as his girlfriend (Katrin Grimm) are kept under observation, and soon there's a trail that leads to a crooked travelling agent (Traugott Buhre), a crime kingpin (Friedrich Joloff), and to Karl Hinz (Max Eckard), husband of the deceased, who admits to the police he has given the smugglers some info about the trains ending at Munich Central (where the murder has happened), nothing exclusive, just what he could cull from his wife. Then there's news that Scharwedder is travelling to Salzburg, Austria, apparently a drug hub, and keeping him under observation, Derrick and company soon learn the smugglers' modus operandi, and ultimately they manage to arrest them all when they try to pick up their next drug shipment, attached to the bottom of a train waggon via electro-magnet.

Kurt Jaggberg makes a cameo appearance as inspector Wirz of the Austrian police, a role he also played in the Austrian arm of the series Tatort back when, but is given disappointingly little to do to drive the plot.

There's a throwaway scene in this one that's quite amusing that sees Derrick asked to describe Scharwedder by his colleagues, and he proves as unreliable a witness as his witnesses usually are in the series. Other than that, this episode proves to be a convoluted mess that leaves way too many questions open, in which, as in many crime dramas written by Herbert Reinecker, characters act and react unnaturally, and which at times loses itself in subplots. At least it's nostalgic fun, but little more.

review © by Mike Haberfelner

 

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