tion id="u503eaa7b-010c-5a6d-b588-0b26c642f3af">
FRANCIS DURBRIDGE
Paul Temple and the Harkdale Robbery
An imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers
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London SE1 9GF
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
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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.
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Source ISBN: 9780008125707
Ebook Edition © June 2015 ISBN: 9780008125714
Version: 2015-07-24
Contents
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
