Paul Temple and the Harkdale Robbery

by Francis Durbridge

  Bloody farm indeed, he thought, it’s just a stretch of marsh land where nothing would grow and cows would sink into the ground if they stayed still. The Red Trees Caravan Site! He wondered whether to get dressed. It was cold to be hanging around in pyjamas and a silk dressing gown, and the matching silk scarf wasn’t keeping death from laryngitis at bay.

  He looked up as he heard somebody whistling. It was Arnold Cookson, threading his way cheerfully through the neighbouring caravans with two pints of milk in his hands.

  ‘Where the hell have you been?’ Desmond Blane asked roughly.

  ‘Up to the farmhouse.’

  ‘I’ve just heard the radio. Skibby’s dead.’

  ‘Oh.’ Arnold Cookson pursed his lips in a silent whistle. He was a much older man, in his early sixties perhaps, and he seemed upset by the news. ‘What about Larry and Ray?’ he asked.

  ‘They weren’t mentioned.’

  Arnold Cookson pushed past him into the caravan. He poured some milk into a saucepan and lit the Calor gas ring. He was preparing breakfast.

  ‘Why does a farm sell milk in milk bottles?’

  ‘I don’t know.’ Arnold examined the milk bottle. ‘Perhaps it’s a good thing,’ he said, almost to himself. ‘Skibby would have talked.’

  ‘So what makes you think Ray will keep his big mouth shut?’ Blane spoke loudly, blustering with nerves. ‘Once they start asking him awkward questions –’ His voice faded into silence. ‘Who’s this?’

  There was a lorry bumping its way noisily down the lane to the caravan site. ‘Joseph Carter & Co.’ it proclaimed on the side. Blane walked suspiciously across to the gate.

  ‘We weren’t expecting you until this afternoon,’ he called.

  Gavin Renson jumped cheerfully from the driving cabin. ‘I know, but we thought we’d come for breakfast.’ He took a large black leather bag from the tool compartment under his seat and strolled past Blane towards the caravan.

  ‘Come on, Jackson,’ he called to the dog. ‘Come and have your porridge.’

  Chapter Two

  Paul Temple tried to relax in the tip-up chair; he closed his eyes while the girl clattered her implements about on the ledge by his head. She adjusted the chair slightly and shone the light full in his face. It was like being at the dentists, except that Miss Benson was younger and prettier than any dentist Paul had been treated by. And she made him feel much more nervous. He didn’t feel happy having his face made up.

  ‘Do I have to be made up like this?’ Paul protested as a matter of form.

  ‘Oh yes, it’s terribly hot under the lights. You’ll perspire, and we wouldn’t want you to look shiny, would we?’

  ‘Heaven forbid.’

  Miss Benson put the finishing touches to his lips, patted his face with powder and then whipped away the towel from under his chin. ‘There, now you look like an extremely well preserved novelist.’

  He rose from the chair and scowled. ‘I am an extremely well preserved novelist.’

  ‘Exactly.’

  Another girl popped her head round the door, exactly on cue, and said, ‘Are you ready for Hospitality now, Mr Temple?’

  ‘I suppose so.’

  Paul waved a resigned farewell to Miss Benson and followed the second girl to a room at the end of the corridor. Four brightly attractive young ladies were chatting up four nervous middle aged men.

  ‘My name’s Andrea Turberville,’ Paul’s bright young lady told him. ‘I gather you’ve been through all this before.’

  ‘Yes. What happens next is that you conjure up a very large whisky and ginger wine.’

  ‘That’s right,’ she said, ‘and a small sherry for me.’ In fact they were conjured up by a chirpy young man. ‘Not nervous, are you?’ Andrea asked.

  ‘Terrified.’ He wasn’t, but it seemed the right thing to say. Paul didn’t want to appear blasé. ‘I’m always tempted on occasions like these to hire a professional actor, so that he can project his personality and remember all the witty lines I think of afterwards. Do you know any good professional actors?’

  She laughed as if it were all part of her job.

  ‘Don’t worry. Brian’s terribly good at putting people at their ease. He’ll help you out if you forget the title of your latest novel or if you suddenly become convinced that your flies are undone. Brian’s terribly professional.’

  Paul glanced cautiously down at his trousers.

  ‘By the way, have you met your fellow performers? Let me introduce you –’

  Brian Clay conducted a chat programme for ITV that aspired to treat serious subjects in a serious way between interludes of pop song and dance. The serious subject this week was crime. Paul Temple had just written a series of newspaper articles in which he claimed that crime was no longer a haphazard collection of underdogs dabbling in a spot of burglary, as it had been, but an organised business with no place for the amateur. So Paul Temple was on the show.

  He would be talking to Freddy the Drummer, a man who had spent most of his life in and out of approved schools, borstals and gaol, to a retired agent of MI5 or MI6, nobody seemed sure which, and to an elderly MP who wanted to bring back the birch and arm the police.

  Paul said hello to them and mentioned the weather. It would take all of Brian Clay’s well known sincerity and charm to produce brilliant talk from this bunch of egotists, Paul decided. The MP was talking as if he feared that once he paused for breath somebody else might speak, and the braying tones were designed to wake up apathetic voters at the back of the hall.

  ‘What do you think of this circus?’ Paul asked the MI5 or 6 agent.

  ‘I think everybody’s terribly talented and sincere,’ he said absently. His brightly attractive young lady was keeping him primed with a continuous supply of whisky. ‘Terribly professional.’

  Paul nodded and wondered whether to talk instead to Freddie the Drummer. But Freddie was sprawled in an armchair, sprawling lower and lower in an attempt to get a better view of Andrea’s mini skirt.

  ‘I think it’s time we went onto the set,’ said Andrea Turberville. ‘It’s a few minutes early, but we ought to see you under the lights. I’ll take you to Richard Cross. He’s the director.’

  The set was the usual table surrounded by armchairs. There was water in carafes and there were ashtrays everyone was told not to use while on camera. Andrea sat them all down to face a tiered audience of two hundred people. There was a stage over to the right where the dancers would dance, and behind the stage a dance band was playing to warm up the audience.

  ‘Paul Temple, eh?’ barked the MP. He had sat in the next armchair. ‘I suppose you writer chaps have been hit by the abolition of capital punishment. No dragging off the villain at the end of the piece. Who cares who dun it when the fellow just goes and spends the rest of his life in comfort at the expense of the ratepayer?’

  Richard Cross scurried across the studio to welcome them all. He said that it should be a terribly controversial programme and Brian was thrilled to have them all on the show. ‘I think we’ll start with Paul’s thesis about big business, is that all right, Paul? And then we’ll talk about how the police aren’t really equipped to cope with such streamlined organisation, and we’ll talk about spies and undercover work. It’ll be riveting. The milk will boil over in a million homes. Any questions?’

  ‘Yes,’ said the man from Intelligence. ‘What happened to that little dolly with the whisky?’

  Richard Cross gave a faintly distraught laugh.

  The Melody Girls had been rehearsing on the stage to the right, and Paul noticed that one of them had remained on the set. She was a tall redhead with strikingly troubled green eyes. Paul thought that she was coming across to them, but somebody called her, and after a moment’s hesitation she went away. Her green flaired chiffon costume was too brief to be hanging around in draughts.

  ‘Sir Michael,’ the director said to the MP, ‘I wonder whether you’d change places with Paul? Your spectacles are upsetting camera number two.
Miss Benson! Where’s Miss Benson? Freddie the Drummer needs some powder on his bald patch –’

  The audience suddenly applauded as a dark, moodily intense young man walked onto the set. He was dressed in a dramatic black suit with white frills, and the one touch of colour was his floppy red bow tie. Without looking across he waved a languid hand in acknowledgment of the clapping. ‘Hi,’ he said to his guests in general. ‘Great to see you, marvellous. It’ll be a great programme.’ He was Brian Clay.

  ‘We’re on in ninety seconds, Brian,’ said the director.

  ‘Great.’ The super-cool young man sat in the centre seat behind the desk and smiled dramatically. ‘Hi,’ he said to Freddie the Drummer, ‘great to have you out in time for the programme. Paul! How nice to have you on the show.’ He leaned across and offered a languid hand. ‘I thought your last book was great.’

  Paul beamed complacently. The nice thing about being flattered by Brian Clay was that he bothered to do it. Clay had the art of seeming to bestow a royal favour, which was warming for the brief moment it lasted. He was terribly sincere. But while Paul was grinning at the military intelligence agent in private amusement they had gone on the air.

  ‘Hi,’ Brian Clay was saying, ‘and good evening. Tonight we’re going to discuss one of the central, most real threats to our health and security, one of the most dramatic aspects of the world today. I’m talking about crime, and the way it is likely to touch us all in the next ten years, because it’s the fastest growing disease in our society. It no longer only happens to other people –’

  His voice was faintly rasping, as if the menace were there among them. ‘And here to discuss it with us tonight –’ He was a professional. He had all the sensational statistics on cards before him, and his intensity would have quite a few old ladies glancing over their shoulders at the back door. ‘Mr Paul Temple, crime writer and in his own way, criminologist!’

  A man over to the right waved and the audience applauded. Paul glanced down in sudden apprehension at his trousers.

  ‘Paul, tell me what’s so different about this present situation. Is it simply that crime is better organised, or is it different? Change or development?’ He stared so innocently that Paul felt a serious answer was required. ‘Mm?’

  ‘What is different is that the people who get caught these days are not the real criminals. In the past if you caught a gang of bank robbers and sent them to gaol that was it, those criminals were out of harm’s way for several years. But these days – these days the gang gets caught if you’re lucky, but the brain behind the crime is left free to plan his next big job. The men behind organised crime are never caught. So no matter how many petty villains you send to gaol you don’t improve the situation. You only fill up the gaols with petty villains.’

  ‘That’s a disturbing thought, Paul.’ He turned dramatically to the MP. ‘Sir Michael, I know you think our present laws make it all too easy for the criminals.’

  The MP began with heavy facetiousness about his role as a Clay pigeon, and then he laughed lugubriously. On the stage to their right The Melody Girls were assembling for their routine. Paul found his attention straying. He didn’t think that the fervour with which MPs held their opinions indicated their profundity. Sir Michael was a bore. Yet the red-headed girl was watching them without a thought for the coming dance number.

  ‘Paul, what do you think about that?’

  ‘Eh?’ The wretch had sprung it on him deliberately. ‘I think Sir Michael is very sincere,’ Paul said, ‘but he knows very little about criminals.’ He wished he had heard a word Sir Michael had said. ‘A prominent MP’s life may be very worthy, but it doesn’t equip a man to understand what makes a criminal tick. There’s a fantastic difference between the lives of the law givers and the law receivers, and I think Sir Michael personifies that difference.’

  Brian Clay perked up at the prospect of some real television, while Sir Michael spluttered with astonishment.

  ‘I keep in touch with the people,’ he shouted, ‘through my constituents! I know my people and what they think! This weekend I’ll be back there holding my monthly clinic, and what will you be doing, writing a novel?’

  Paul nodded happily. ‘I’m going off to the cottage, actually, and I hope to start on my new book –’

  ‘Cottage? You retreat to a cottage in the country and talk to me about crime? What happens in your part of the country? They probably don’t know what crime is!’

  ‘Freddie, where do you sit on this fence?’ Brian Clay asked.

  ‘Yes, well, I mean, they’re right, aren’t they? What happens in country cottages? And how would an MP know about crime?’

  ‘Does that worry you?’ Brian Clay asked the man from Intelligence. ‘Did you used to feel there was a gulf between the life of the pursuer and the pursued?’

  ‘Never.’ The impeccably dressed man smiled beatifically. ‘What I always say is that if you’re still alive then you haven’t much to worry about, have you?’

  That was a conversation stopper. While Brian Clay worked out how to begin again the director waved to the dancers. They were all in place and the music began its introduction.

  ‘Ladies and gentlemen,’ Brian murmured into the microphone, ‘we give you The Melody Girls!’

  The show went out live at ten o’clock on a Friday evening. Doing it live ensured spontaneity and the extra charge of tension which Brian Clay thought so essential to real television. It also meant it was damned late when Paul left the studios. The clock in the gatekeeper’s lodge showed two minutes past eleven. Paul waved in farewell to the man from Intelligence, who tottered off in search of a drink, and looked about for his car.

  ‘Paul! Over here!’

  His wife waved while the gatekeeper raised the barrier. She was looking brightly enthusiastic, so presumably she had approved of his performance. Paul slipped into the passenger seat and kissed her on the cheek.

  ‘Was I all right?’ he asked.

  ‘Marvellous, darling. You were terribly sincere.’

  ‘Oh my God.’

  Steve had insisted on watching the programme in the saloon bar of the pub round the corner from the studio. It was her idea of a public opinion sample. And the pub had a colour set.

  ‘The people in the saloon bar enjoyed the way you made Sir Michael look ridiculous. But of course they all agreed with him.’

  Paul sighed. ‘Well, let’s get moving. We’ve a long way to go tonight.’

  Steve pressed the accelerator and they moved out into the traffic. By the main entrance to the studios Paul saw the red headed dancer struggling with her suitcase. As they drove past the girl swung round to look at them, tripped over the case and fell.

  ‘Pull up!’ Paul exclaimed.

  ‘I thought,’ Steve said with an ironic glance at the girl, ‘we had a long way to go.’

  ‘Something’s bothering that girl.’

  ‘I remember the feeling when I first met you.’

  Paul hurried back along the pavement and helped the girl to her feet. She was more embarrassed than hurt. Paul picked up the suitcase and watched while she brushed the dust off her coat.

  ‘Are you all right now?’

  ‘No, I’ve laddered my stockings.’

  ‘Perhaps we can give you a lift somewhere?’

  She smiled gratefully. ‘I was hoping to catch the eleven thirty from Paddington. It’s the last train –’

  ‘We’ll make it.’ Paul put the suitcase in the boot of the Rolls and then held the door while she climbed into the back of the car. ‘Where are you going?’

  ‘Oxford,’ she said. ‘My parents live near there and I promised to spend the night with them. For a change. I haven’t seen them in months.’

  ‘This is your lucky night,’ murmured Steve. She drove into the main flow of traffic going out to the Western Avenue. ‘We’re off to the Cotswolds, so we can drop you off at your door. We’ve a house near Broadway.’

  ‘It’s awfully kind of you.’ The girl relaxed, re
moved her hat and tossed the red hair free, then she smiled. ‘I’m Betty Stanway, by the way. I’m a dancer.’

  ‘Steve Temple. And the man with the charming manners is my husband.’

  ‘I know, I was in the Brian Clay Show with him. I was meaning to talk to him all evening, but my nerve kept failing me. I know it must be tiresome for celebrities to have complete strangers button-holing them; I don’t usually do it.’

  ‘What did you want to talk to him about?’ Steve asked. ‘Paul enjoys being button-holed by attractive young dancers.’

  ‘I wanted to ask his advice. Or at least, well, I wanted to give him some information. You know, I just felt I needed to talk to someone, and after I read that series of articles in the newspaper –’ She had become incoherent. ‘I was worried, that’s all.’

  ‘Have you eaten today, Miss Stanway?’ Steve asked, briskly maternal and down to earth.

  The girl was startled. ‘No, I don’t think so.’

  ‘Neither has Paul. He pretends to be absolutely blasé about his television appearances, but he’s so nervous he doesn’t eat for two days beforehand. We’ll stop at the Coach Club. We can have supper, and they serve drinks there until three in the morning. All right, Paul?’

  ‘Good idea.’ Paul watched the lights of the oncoming traffic. ‘But I wasn’t nervous. I had two hamburgers at half past seven this evening.’

  The Coach House was an eighteenth century building on the outskirts of Oxford. It had its legends as a meeting place for the literary establishment from Byron to Beerbohm, but it was now the haunt of motor car executives and the more pampered undergraduates. Paul led the two women into the dining room. It was only half full, but the aroma of rich food and cigars hung in the air. The oak beams and brass looked decently timeless in the half light. It could have been any time since 1732, apart from the clothes.

  ‘Good evening, Mr Temple. Will your party stay at the bar while we take your order?’