Paul Temple and the Harkdale Robbery

by Francis Durbridge

  ‘I’m Mrs O’Hanrahan,’ the woman declared with a shriek of laughter. ‘I live down the road by the post office.’

  ‘You’ll do, if Mrs Temple isn’t in.’ She was a formidable woman, but she seemed pleased to have company. ‘Can we go inside and talk?’

  She took Desmond Blane through to the kitchen and told him about her reading habits, about the late Paddy O’Hanrahan, may he rest in peace, about her life, and Mr Temple and his little foibles.

  ‘He reads newspapers,’ she announced impressively. ‘Mr Temple always does the crossword, but he cheats. He looks up the quotations in a dictionary.’

  ‘I seem to remember that he writes for one of the papers.’

  ‘He’s very clever.’ She nodded and hitched up her bra strap. ‘He’s got a terribly pretty wife.’

  ‘A series of articles on the gang scene –’

  ‘She’s a designer.’

  ‘Really? I expect there have been a lot of reactions to the articles. People coming to the house and so on?’

  ‘Terribly natural, she is, talks to you just like an ordinary person like you or me.’

  ‘Thank you,’ he sighed.

  To his relief there was a knock at the door and Mrs O’Hanrahan bustled out to answer it. Desmond Blane wondered how he could keep her to the point. She was so talkative that it was impossible to get information from her. He heard the voice at the front door asking for Paul Temple.

  ‘He won’t be here until tomorrow,’ she was saying.

  The man at the door was Gavin Renson! He could hear the kid saying it didn’t matter, he only wanted to discuss a series of newspaper articles…

  Desmond Blane left the kitchen by the side door. He saw the lorry in the lane, and a few moments later Renson went down the path, climbed into the driver’s cabin and left. Blane hurried after him.

  He caught up with Renson just past the Fish Inn.

  ‘I don’t know why he went to see Paul Temple.’

  The caravan was getting on Desmond’s nerves. The smell of calor gas, the buckets of water that had to be fetched from a communal tap, and the chemical toilets on the other side of the field. They didn’t seem to worry Arnold Cookson. Thirty-seven times yesterday Arnold had said, ‘Nature calls!’ and thirty-seven times he had trotted happily across to the bog. There was something wrong with his tubes! It worried Desmond Blane.

  ‘I hope to God we can trust your girlfriend,’ said Arnold.

  ‘What do you mean, trust her? We don’t need to trust her, because she won’t know what she’s carrying.’

  ‘If there’s any doubt about her –’

  ‘There isn’t. We’ll be in Dublin tomorrow.’

  ‘What time is she supposed to be ringing?’

  ‘Twelve o’clock, on the dot.’ Blane glanced at his watch. ‘Yes, I’d better get down to the call box.’ He picked up the jacket from his bunk, swung it over his shoulder, and left the caravan. It was five to twelve so he took the car.

  The telephone box was empty. Desmond reversed the car and sat in it while he waited for the call. He waited for five and a half minutes. His irritation began to mount as the hands of the car clock moved away from the hour. She was a silly bitch. Just a silly little bitch who had thought he was rich. He remembered how impressed she had been with the penthouse. And she always drank so much that she fell asleep in the middle of making love. Three times that had happened! But she could be trusted. The silly bitch was in love with him.

  Eventually he got out of the car and went into the telephone kiosk. He picked up the receiver to dial and then paused. The line was dead. ‘Sod,’ he breathed. He stayed in the kiosk and pretended to be speaking to someone as two police cars raced by.

  Desmond Blane gave them two minutes and then followed carefully back to the caravan site. He saw the police cars in the field while a uniformed policeman stood at the gate. Desmond accelerated and drove straight past. He narrowly missed a Rolls that was coming in from the opposite direction. They hooted at each other and passed by.

  Paul Temple pulled up at the Red Trees Caravan Site and recovered his nerve. He didn’t like people who drove cars straight at him. The police were busily making their arrests, they didn’t appear to need any help from him. But Paul wandered across to have a look at the villains.

  ‘There’s only one,’ Inspector Manley said gruffly. ‘This is Arnold Cookson.’

  ‘Good morning,’ said Paul. He was about sixty, quite tall, with a northern accent. ‘Where’s Desmond Blane?’

  ‘Who?’ Cookson continued to assert that he was a simple holidaymaker. ‘Why don’t you try the caravan next door? There must be some mistake.’

  After warning Cookson the Inspector said ‘I’m arresting you for murder, robbery with violence, conspiring –’

  ‘I’m not saying another word!’

  A policeman had been systematically searching the caravan. He pulled a suitcase from underneath one of the bunks and asked Arnold Cookson for the key.

  ‘I don’t have a key. That isn’t my suitcase.’

  He watched tensely while the policeman prised the case open with a small penknife. The case was empty.

  ‘The money!’ Cookson gasped. ‘Where’s the money?’

  Inspector Manley smiled. ‘It looks as if you’ve been double-crossed, Arnold. You’d better tell me who your friends are.’

  ‘There was more than a hundred grand in that case!’

  ‘So where is it? Come along, Arnold, don’t be loyal. Who runs this little outfit of yours?’

  Cookson was white faced and his mouth trembled as he spoke. ‘I don’t know. Desmond Blane was the only one I knew.’

  It appeared to be true that Cookson’s only known superior was Blane, for the police were unable to shift him from this in two hours of close and detailed questioning. Paul sat on the bunk at the end of the caravan and watched the dogged Inspector Manley tie the man up in conclusive detail.

  ‘You might as well tell us everything,’ the inspector said, ‘because we know most of it, including that nice little pose of being a respectable estate agent.’

  ‘I’m a genuine estate agent,’ Cookson insisted. ‘There’s a certificate on the wall of my office with the charter –’

  ‘I know, I know, you qualified nineteen years ago in Liverpool. We’ve had your records sent through to us. Nineteen years ago you were obviously determined to make a new start. But it didn’t last long, did it? You were soon back inside.’

  ‘I meant to go straight this time,’ said Cookson.

  Inspector Manley chuckled. ‘Is that what you call it? You were released from Parkhurst six months ago, you collected the loot that had been waiting for you and came out here to make another new start. But this didn’t last long either, did it? What happened?

  Arnold Cookson was smoking cigarette after cigarette while he talked of how badly the slump in housing had hit the estate agent business. He knew that his tobacco ration would be limited for the next few years.

  ‘I’d only recently bought myself a partnership in Kimber & Son. I put every penny I had into the business, and then the bloody government had to produce another credit squeeze. The mortgage position is impossible –’

  ‘So what happened?’ Manley interrupted.

  Cookson had been enjoying a few gins in the Black Bear one evening when Desmond Blane had approached him. It had seemed like a casual meeting, yet Blane knew all there was to know about him. He had known about the prison record, and more important he had known how desperate were his present business arrangements.

  ‘Blane had a series of bank jobs lined up, and they were to happen in quick succession. That would be the end of it, a quick swoop and I would be paid sixty thousand pounds.’ He smiled a nervous, tobacco stained smile. ‘I couldn’t refuse, could I?’

  ‘What was your part in the raids?’ asked Manley.

  ‘I planned them, of course. I worked out the strategy. They call me Field Marshal Cookson.’

  Paul wondered whether C
ookson could be the super-brain, but it was most unlikely. There was more to robbing banks than robbing banks. And Cookson was a graduate of the early borstals, he had spent all his life in and out of prison. He would not suddenly become a man who gave orders.

  ‘I had to draw up the plans for the raids and submit them through Desmond Blane for approval. I was told which bank and what day the raid would be on, and I had to work out what was necessary to pull it off.’

  ‘Were the plans approved?’ Paul intervened.

  ‘The boss made a few modifications.’ He thought for a moment and then added reluctantly, ‘They were sound modifications too.’

  ‘Who was the boss?’

  But Cookson didn’t know. He didn’t even know much about the bank raiders who actually did the job. Paul had to admire the way the super-brain had acquired his men and then kept them apart. Arnold Cookson and his assistant Gavin Renson had put in the local fieldwork together for several months, and that was almost the end of their work. Renson had to pick up the money and bring it to the caravan. Arnold had to stay with Blane to keep an eye on the schedules.

  ‘Did it all go according to schedule?’ asked Manley.

  ‘More or less, until Harkdale. The trouble was that it was suddenly put ahead by a month, so we had to rush things. I didn’t know about the Harkdale job until a month ago. If we had kept to the original timetable we wouldn’t have met that patrol car.’

  ‘And perhaps,’ said Manley, ‘the money would still be here in the suitcase.’

  ‘Perhaps.’ Arnold Cookson glowered at the empty case. ‘That bloody girlfriend of Blane’s must have taken it back to London. I knew there was something going on. She slept here the night before last.’

  ‘That sounds cosy.’

  ‘Cosy? They were bouncing around on that bunk like rabbits until four o’clock in the morning. The caravan lurched three feet further into the field.’ He sighed. ‘I suppose she’s taking the money to safety. We were supposed to be going to Ireland for the shareout, but that’s off now. I’ll never see Ireland again. Or my share of the money.’

  ‘What was this girl’s name?’ Manley asked.

  ‘Betty Stanway.’

  ‘Ah.’ He looked complacently at Paul. ‘You were right, Temple.’

  ‘Of course.’

  Arnold Cookson rose to his feet. ‘I’ve smoked all my cigarettes. We might as well be going.’ He looked around the caravan for the last time, glanced at the cows on the far side of the field, and walked out to meet his sentence. He accepted defeat with dignity.

  Paul watched the police car drive away with its prisoner, waved in acknowledgement to the two constables who had remained to make routine enquiries on the site, and then he headed for London.

  ‘Who was that?’ PC Newby asked. ‘The Chief Constable?’

  ‘Paul Temple,’ said Brooks. ‘He talks about crime on television.’

  Newby hammered on another caravan door. ‘Sounds like a better life than being a policeman.’

  He wondered why people should take their holidays in May. Or why they should take them in a field near Banbury. But it seemed that very few people did. They were mostly owned by the high fliers of Birmingham who came out for the weekends. They found three people in residence, and they were the three wise monkeys.

  ‘No, I never saw anybody go near that caravan. What was supposed to be going on?’

  ‘No, I never heard a thing. I didn’t know there had been a bank robbery.’

  ‘I can’t talk to you now, I’ve got a hangover and my husband’s at work.’

  The one with a hangover was a young blonde and Newby watched his colleague disappear into her caravan with cheerful assurances that he knew an old gypsy cure.

  It would serve PC Brooks right if he did get chucked out of the force, he thought. When that report on how he had smashed up another police car reached the divisional superintendent it ought to be his lot. Which would be a relief. Brooks was already getting on his nerves, and they had only been driving together for two days.

  Bob Newby plodded slowly up the hill to the farmhouse. Perhaps after all it was lucky that he was alone. He might stumble on something important, and as this was the biggest case that had ever come his way he would like to be the lone hero. It would make sure of that promotion.

  But there was only an old man in the house, and he didn’t know anything either. He looked after the bookings for the caravan site, supplied them with milk and newspapers, and made sure the council took away the refuse.

  Bob Newby plodded down the hill again. He hated farms. He found PC Brooks leaning over a fence and stroking a cow in the next field. Not a care in the world.

  ‘Any luck?’ Newby asked him.

  ‘Not this time, but I’ll be back. She’s staying here all through the summer.’

  ‘That wasn’t what I meant.’

  Chapter Ten

  Desmond Blane looked ruffled, there was a glint in his eyes from a frightening light and his hair needed combing. All men look like dangerous criminals in their CRO photographs, but Desmond Blane looked like some other criminal. They would never catch him by issuing that to the newspapers, Paul decided. Underneath the photograph was a caption which referred ironically to Blane as ‘the darkly good-looking London company director, whom the police wish to interview in connection with the series of Midlands bank raids.’

  While Paul was reflecting on the poor quality of criminal records he realised that this was the man who had driven straight at him that morning. They had missed capturing him by thirty seconds, and by failing to circulate his photograph earlier. It was an impressive record: only one conviction, for armed robbery at the age of eighteen. Blane was not a petty crook.

  ‘Inspector Vosper will see you now, Mr Temple.’

  Paul went into his office. A cluttered, smoke filled den that looked onto a courtyard. Charlie Vosper was putting away an empty sandwich tin and trying to look as if he had been working.

  ‘Just been setting the hounds onto Desmond Blane,’ he said as he waved to a chair. ‘You’ve seen the photograph? One of our mug shots. That’ll find the bastard. Give us forty-eight hours and the case will be cleared up nicely.’

  Paul wondered whether they had forty-eight hours to spare.

  ‘Maybe not, but all we can do is ask around, circularise his old haunts and interview his known acquaintances. Otherwise we’ll have to wait for him. We’ll have him if he appears at one of the airports, don’t worry.’

  ‘Have you put a man onto Betty Stanway?’

  Inspector Vosper was evasive. ‘We’re looking into that.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘I mean we can’t find the damned kid.’

  ‘But she’s in danger –’

  ‘We’ve notified the airport authorities in Dublin. What more can we do?’

  ‘She won’t go to Dublin now.’

  Vosper picked up the coffee cup from the top of his files and emptied the cold dregs with a grimace.

  ‘This is marvellous,’ Paul said wearily. ‘We’ve cleared up all the small fry, and now the people in the centre of this case have all vanished. Do you know what’s likely to happen? The organising mind behind all this is going to get away with it!’

  Charlie Vosper nodded cheerfully. ‘Those provincial police forces do their best, Temple, and of course it’s a point of pride with them not to call in the Yard –’

  Police politics! Paul ducked the whole issue. ‘There are obviously two channels to the organising mind. The first channel, from the gang which carried out the robberies, is through Desmond Blane. But there is a second channel. From inside the banks, through the person who provided the inside information. It’s my guess that person is in London –’

  ‘I already thought of it,’ said Vosper. ‘The bank’s head office is letting me have a list of all its staff, with a note on those who have access to information about large transfers of money.’

  ‘The inside man may have left the bank suddenly, about four
weeks ago. I think that must have been the reason the robbers decided to move their schedule forward.’

  ‘I hadn’t finished,’ Vosper said. ‘I asked for a special list of all employees who left within the last ten weeks.’

  ‘Good thinking, Charlie.’

  ‘I’ve been doing quite a bit of thinking during the lunch hour. I’ve decided you could be right.’ He puffed at his pipe encouragingly. ‘If we must have your whizz kids coming into crime, what better place for them to come from than the banks? They’ll be trained in accountancy, grammar-school boys with a bit of further education. I think we might find that our inside man is a very interesting character. He would be meticulous, a good organisation man. I’m looking forward to meeting him.’

  Vosper reached for his hat and opened the door in one practised movement as he stood up. ‘Well, are you coming to pick up that list of names with me?’

  The bank head office was in Leadenhall Street, and as a police car drove them along the Strand and Fleet Street and past St Paul’s there was time to reflect on Inspector Vosper’s objectives. He was troubled, because he wanted someone to put on trial for the death of that policeman in Harkdale. It wasn’t enough that the man who had shot PC Felton was also dead. Inspector Vosper believed in justice being seen to be done, and that troubled him. He didn’t like his emotions to be involved in a case.

  ‘They’re holding his funeral tomorrow,’ said Charlie. ‘But I’m not going. I’ve seen too many funerals, I can imagine Harry Felton’s wife, a nice country girl with a couple of happily unimaginative kids, and I know how angry it would make me feel. The trouble with being a copper is that getting shot at is all part of the job.’

  Paul knew what an effort it was for Charlie Vosper to put his quite complex feelings into words. ‘Crime is an emotional business,’ Paul said lamely. ‘There’s a lot of suffering behind the baldly stated facts.’

  Vosper stared at the Mansion House as they passed. There was some kind of city reception on, and a sergeant directing the VIP traffic saluted them. ‘I hope you’re wrong about them using Betty Stanway to get the money out of the country. She’ll be another casualty, especially if they’ve changed their plans and won’t be using her.’