Paul Temple and the Harkdale Robbery. Francis Durbridge

      

      FRANCIS DURBRIDGE

      Paul Temple and the Harkdale Robbery

      An imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers

      1 London Bridge Street

      London SE1 9GF

       www.harpercollins.co.uk

      First published in Great Britain by

      Hodder & Stoughton 1970

      Copyright © Francis Durbridge 1970

      All rights reserved

      Francis Durbridge has asserted his right under the Copyright,

      Designs and Patents Act, 1988 to be identified as the author of this work

      Cover design © HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd 2015

      Cover image © Shutterstock.com

      A catalogue copy of this book is available from the British Library.

      This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.

      All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins.

      Source ISBN: 9780008125707

      Ebook Edition © June 2015 ISBN: 9780008125714

      Version: 2015-07-24

      Contents

       Cover

       Title Page

       Copyright

       Chapter One

       Chapter Two

       Chapter Three

       Chapter Four

       Chapter Five

       Chapter Six

      

       Chapter Seven

      

       Chapter Eight

      

       Chapter Nine

      

       Chapter Ten

      

       Chapter Eleven

      

       Chapter Twelve

      

       Chapter Thirteen

      

       About the Author

      

       Also in This Series

      

       About the Publisher

       Chapter One

      Nothing ever happens in Harkdale on a Friday afternoon.

      The black Wolseley cruised along the deserted country road because it was part of the schedule. Showing the police car in Harkdale each afternoon was like showing the flag in the outposts of empire, a symbol for the inhabitants that they were being looked after. Police Constable Newby drove through the flat midland countryside without seeing the potato fields or the pine woods; he didn’t speak to PC Felton beside him. Newby was a town man and only the smoke and the factory skyline seven miles behind them was real. He thought of becoming a sergeant and recited pages of Moriarty’s Police Law to himself to pass the time. There was nothing else to do.

      ‘There’s a lorry over there in the lay-by,’ said Felton.

      Lay-by? He made it sound like the motorway to London. Newby reflected that it was odd for a man called Moriarty to write their basic textbook: Moriarty, the archfiend of Sherlock Holmes. For a bored few seconds he pursued the idea that the archfiend had written it all wrong to throw the law into confusion.

      ‘Pull up, Bob,’ said Felton. ‘He might need help.’

      ‘Who might?’

      ‘The lorry driver, of course.’

      Harry Felton would think of something like that! He was a born country copper, doomed to remain a PC all his life. He told people the time and helped old ladies across the road. The schoolkids in all these outlying villages called him Harry. He was a little undynamic for Bob Newby’s taste. The police car screeched to a halt.

      ‘So ask him if he needs help,’ sighed PC Bob Newby.

      He watched his colleague go over to the lorry. ‘Joseph Carter & Co.’ the legend on the side of the lorry proclaimed. While somebody underneath it was tinkering with the works a fox terrier guarded the dismantled rear wheel. The hub and various parts of the wheel were scattered over the grass verge.

      ‘Hello, Jackson,’ said the policeman as he bent down to pat the dog. The dog, Jackson, wagged its tail. ‘Are you having trouble?’ Even the damned dogs, Bob Newby realised, knew Harry Felton. ‘Where’s your villain of a master?’

      The dog’s master looked a villain to PC Newby, but then most people did to PC Newby. The lorry driver didn’t look, apart from the way he was dressed, like a lorry driver. He looked an intelligent young man, but he had longish hair; his attitude as he stood up beside the lorry was slightly supercilious. He looked like the kind of student who gets arrested on demonstrations.

      ‘Hello, Gavin,’ PC Felton said. ‘Fancy seeing you.’

      ‘Enjoying