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