Switcheroo (A Gideon Oliver Mystery Book 18)

by Aaron Elkins

  OTHER TITLES BY AARON ELKINS

  Gideon Oliver Mysteries

  Fellowship of Fear

  The Dark Place

  Murder in the Queen’s Armes

  Old Bones

  Curses!

  Icy Clutches

  Make No Bones

  Dead Men’s Hearts

  Twenty Blue Devils

  Skeleton Dance

  Good Blood

  Where There’s a Will

  Unnatural Selection

  Little Tiny Teeth

  Uneasy Relations

  Skull Duggery

  Dying on the Vine

  Chris Norgren Mysteries

  A Deceptive Clarity

  A Glancing Light

  Old Scores

  Stand-Alone Thrillers

  Loot

  Turncoat

  The Worst Thing

  Lee Ofsted Mysteries

  (with Charlotte Elkins)

  A Wicked Slice

  Rotten Lies

  Nasty Breaks

  Where Have All the Birdies Gone?

  On the Fringe

  Alix London Mysteries

  (with Charlotte Elkins)

  A Dangerous Talent

  A Cruise to Die For

  The Art Whisperer

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, organizations, places, events, and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

  Text copyright © 2016 Aaron Elkins

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without express written permission of the publisher.

  Published by Thomas & Mercer, Seattle

  www.apub.com

  Amazon, the Amazon logo, and Thomas & Mercer are trademarks of Amazon.com, Inc., or its affiliates.

  ISBN-13: 9781477827680

  ISBN-10: 1477827684

  Cover design by David Drummond

  CONTENTS

  CHAPTER 1

  CHAPTER 2

  CHAPTER 3

  CHAPTER 4

  CHAPTER 5

  CHAPTER 6

  CHAPTER 7

  CHAPTER 8

  CHAPTER 9

  CHAPTER 10

  CHAPTER 11

  CHAPTER 12

  CHAPTER 13

  CHAPTER 14

  CHAPTER 15

  CHAPTER 16

  CHAPTER 17

  CHAPTER 18

  CHAPTER 19

  CHAPTER 20

  CHAPTER 21

  CHAPTER 22

  CHAPTER 23

  CHAPTER 24

  CHAPTER 25

  CHAPTER 26

  CHAPTER 27

  CHAPTER 28

  CHAPTER 29

  CHAPTER 30

  CHAPTER 31

  CHAPTER 32

  CHAPTER 33

  AFTERWORD

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  CHAPTER 1

  Jersey, the Channel Islands, Great Britain, June 1940

  The Nazis were coming.

  It was all anybody could talk about. The capitulation of the French, making official what everyone knew to be a fact anyway, was now a week old, and the coast of Occupied France was only twelve miles away, visible even on a cloudy day. On a clear one you could pick out the cars on the roads. With binoculars, you could see that they were tanks and personnel carriers, not cars. Already the Germans were entrenched in the fortified coastal city of Saint-Malo, fifteen minutes by Luftwaffe bomber from Jersey.

  Meanwhile, what the islanders called “the Homeland”—England—was ten times more distant, across virtually the entire width of the English Channel, and the Homeland had thrown them to the wolves. Once the threat of a German invasion of the Channel Islands had become both certain and imminent, London had shocked the islanders by withdrawing all means of defense. The British soldiers stationed on the two main islands, Guernsey and Jersey, had been hurriedly—some said furtively—evacuated. And there was no air cover, no Royal Navy vessel within call. The British government had declared the islands a demilitarized zone, in effect an invitation to the Germans to march right on in. And the inhabitants had been left to cope on their own.

  All this only weeks after their beloved (no longer quite so beloved) Winnie had made his stirring call to arms:

  We shall fight on the beaches, we shall fight on the landing grounds, we shall fight in the fields and in the streets, we shall fight in the hills . . .

  “He forgot the part about ‘We shall fight everywhere but in the Channel Islands,’” went the sour joke making the rounds in Saint Helier and Saint Peter Port.

  The outrage and shock of the abandoned islanders prompted London to provide ships for those who wanted to evacuate to the Homeland before the occupiers came. Many whose roots were too deep in the soil elected to remain, but there were thousands desperate to get out with their families before it was too late; even in 1940 they’d heard about the Gestapo and the concentration camps. But there weren’t enough ships and there wasn’t nearly enough time (the evacuation was to run for only three days) to accommodate them all.

  The entire hastily put-together process was a mess. Evacuations were not announced until June 19, at which time islanders who hoped to leave were told to register and get their tickets at the Saint Helier Town Hall by ten the next morning (and pay for them if they could afford it) and be ready to board that same day if necessary. Altogether, it meant less than twenty-four hours to decide if you wanted to leave the Channel Islands at all (many for the first time), perhaps never to return; to figure out what you would do (and how much could you do?) about the property you would leave behind—your livestock, your debts, your possessions, your business, your bank account; and to be packed (with a limit of twenty-eight pounds per person) and ready to travel.

  The exodus started smoothly enough, with polite queues (they were still British, after all), but within hours the famously tranquil social fabric of the islands tore apart. There were fistfights, hair pulling, screaming accusations of cheating, and, inevitably, appeals from those who didn’t make it onto the register.

  The final decisions on these appeals were in the hands of senior government officials, soon overworked and harried to a man, one of whom, Senator Roland Makepeace, the seventy-three-year-old chief deputy to the bailiff of Jersey, had been given the particularly touchy task of dealing with appeals from “important” citizens, which, alas, meant pretty much the same thing as it did with the unimportant ones, viz., turning virtually all of them down.

  By midafternoon of the second day, he had seen thirty-eight such petitioners, only one of whose appeals he’d been able to approve. It was a heart-wrenching job, and Senator Makepeace, good soul that he was, wasn’t holding up very well. He was physically and emotionally drained. So many fearful, frenzied people, so much misery, such a limited ability to help.

  “I’m very sorry, Mr. Wright, there’s nothing I can do,” he was saying to number thirty-nine. “I’m sure you understand that we cannot make exceptions to the rules by which so many people have already abided.”

  “Of course I do, Senator, and I appreciate it. I’m not asking for myself. I’ll stick it out. But my father is eighty-nine now, and my mother is only a year younger, and neither one is in good health. Frankly, I don’t see how they can survive the hardships that are sure to come when the Germans get here.”

  Makepeace repressed a sigh. How many variations of this had he heard in the last forty-eight hours? His heart went out to Scott Wright, and to his aged parents, as it had to everyone he’d
already seen. But there was nothing he could do, nothing that wouldn’t be unfair to so many others.

  “I’m sorry,” he said again, and this time Wright could see that that was the end of it.

  He nodded and rose. “Thank you for taking the time to see me, Senator Makepeace,” he said woodenly.

  Makepeace got up to shake his hand. “Good luck, Scott. It’s a terrible time we’re living in. And good luck to your parents.”

  “Good luck to us all, Senator. We’ll need it.”

  The senator sat alone for a few minutes, smoking a cigarette and pulling himself together for the next interview. He felt every bit as old as Scott Wright’s mother and father. Still, this was part of his sworn duty, and he flicked on the intercom to speak with his clerk.

  “I’m ready, Dickinson, let’s get on with it. Send the next one in.”

  “It’s Howard Carlisle, sir,” Dickinson whispered, and Makepeace’s heart sank even lower.

  Carlisle was indeed one of those “important” people. The Carlisles had been important since 1872, when Howard’s grandfather was surprised to learn that the unsightly black sludge that had been seeping forever from the base of a rock outcropping on his dairy farm was some newfangled stuff called “asphaltum.” He had been even more astonished at the annual fee that a Newcastle construction company had been willing to pay him for access to the sticky, smelly stuff. The money had been enough for Carlisle to buy up two thousand acres of prime farmland in bits and pieces over the next few years and stock them with cattle from France and England, making Carlisle & Son Dairies the island’s biggest dairy farmer. It still was, with its herd now standing at four thousand—all the land could support—and Howard Carlisle, the son of the “Son,” was one of the island’s richest men, if not the richest. And if that wasn’t enough, in 1933, Carlisle had ended the Newcastle firm’s lease on his asphalt and turned the deposit to his own ends, opening his own road-construction company, Carlisle Paving, which had quickly become the Channel Islands’ major road builder.

  Like Makepeace, Carlisle was one of Jersey’s ten legislative senators, a formidable man, not only of wealth but of influence, and used to having his way. He was, by most measures, an admirable man, if sometimes perhaps a little too self-assured. Makepeace shrank from having to see him do something that in all this time he’d never seen him once do: beg.

  But when Dickinson ushered him in, Carlisle didn’t look as if he had supplication in mind. Wherever he was, Howard Carlisle looked as if he owned the place, and this was no less true in Makepeace’s own office, which annoyed Makepeace, and not for the first time.

  “Good afternoon, Roland. I appreciate your seeing me. I know how busy you must be. I’ll be brief.” The words were civil enough and politely delivered, but the tone indicated that Carlisle had the impression he was the one who would be running this meeting.

  Makepeace’s spine stiffened further. Unconsciously, he helped it along, aware at some level that his irritation with Howard would make it easier to do what had to be done. He grunted acknowledgement and gestured to the carved chair beside the grand desk. “Sit down, will you, Howard?”

  “Let me get directly to the matter at hand,” Carlisle said as he took his seat.

  But Makepeace wouldn’t let him get started. “I know what brings you here, Howard.” Best to get this over with as quickly as possible.

  Carlisle smiled and lifted his chin. “Do you, now?”

  “Yes, the same thing that everyone else who’s been here today has wanted. You’ve decided you’d best get your family to England—and to safety—after all. And believe me, I would help you if I could, but I’m afraid it’s out of the question. It’s simply not possible.”

  “That’s a bit peremptory, wouldn’t you say, Roland?” But his smile seemed a little forced now, his posture rigid rather than erect. “I know you’ve been dealing with people’s problems all day—”

  “And all day yesterday.”

  “—but surely you’ll agree that my circumstances—my son’s circumstances—are of a different order than most. My situation genuinely is extraordinary—and desperate.”

  “Not really, Howard.” Makepeace cleared his throat, or tried to. His voice was ragged from too much talking, too much tension, and too much impotence. “Your situation, as you put it, in simplest terms, is this: When the directive to register for evacuations was published the day before yesterday, you decided to remain, to stay at your post, and therefore didn’t act on it, a reaction I commend. But now, after the registration deadline has passed and there is no more room on the available ships, you have changed your mind—you and many dozens of others. I don’t criticize you for this, but I have told them all, and I will tell you, that it is too late.”

  “Now, Roland, you know me. You know it’s not for myself that I’m concerned, and not for Grace either. We could get by, just as I know that you and Penny will. But Roddy . . .” When he said his son’s name, he sagged visibly in his chair. “I simply . . . I . . . there has to be some way . . .” His fingers went to his temples, and then he leaned his head heavily on both hands. The starch had gone out of him as suddenly as if it had been doused with a pail of water.

  Oh, dear, Makepeace thought with horror, is the man about to cry? I am far too old for this. He lowered his eyes to his own fingers, drumming softly on the desk.

  Carlisle quickly recovered himself. “What you say is true,” he said in a tight monotone. “When I refused to register, I was reacting on instinct, on patriotic instinct, if you will permit me to call it that. Patriotic fervor, I should say. Like you, as a senator, I felt that I had a duty to see this thing through—”

  “Yes, yes, I understand all that.”

  “—to serve our people in whatever way I could in the difficult time ahead. But then . . . then . . .”

  The tears were there behind his eyes again, and Makepeace most assuredly did not want to see them. “But then, when you came down from your patriotic cloud, when it was too late, you thought about Roderick. Or more likely, Grace made you think about him. And—”

  “And when I did, I realized that I was signing his death warrant. Roddy was born prematurely, as you know, a tiny, delicate thing, and even now, at almost three years, he weighs less than two stone. We both know that there are hard times to come, Roland, and I don’t think he could survive a German occupation. Grace is quite right. It’s essential that I get him out of here and to England. Although after Dunkirk, with the way the war’s going, who knows if even England, or any place at all—” He stopped himself, aware that he was babbling.

  “And how would you suggest this be accomplished?” Makepeace asked stonily. “You decided not to register. Now you’ve changed your mind and you expect me to remove from the manifest three people who have followed the rules in good faith, so that you, Grace, and Roderick can leave in their stead?”

  The change in tone took Carlisle aback. “I . . . I . . .”

  “Tell me, Howard, do you have a suggestion as to which particular family I should cancel to make room for the Carlisles? Would you care to be the one to inform them of the change?”

  It had been meant as irony, but Carlisle, a very different man from what he’d been when he walked in five minutes earlier, grasped at it. “Yes, absolutely, whatever’s required! I can make it up to them. They can set their own price. I’d pay whatever I had to.”

  With no response from Makepeace, Carlisle stopped again but then spoke in a wretched whisper, not looking at Makepeace but staring down at the tabletop. “Roland, if there’s anything you personally can do for me—as a friend, I mean—I’m, I’m sure I could, I could show my appreci—”

  Makepeace ended it before Carlisle could demean himself any further. “I’m sorry, Howard,” he said abruptly and with authority. “Dickinson!” he called out.

  Almost instantly, the door opened and Dickinson’s head popped through. “Sir?”

  “Will you escort the senator out, please, and bring in the next perso
n.”

  “Sir.”

  Carlisle rose, gathering around him what was left of his dignity. “Thank you, Senator. I understand completely. Please don’t bother, Dickinson. I can see myself out.”

  CHAPTER 2

  Around the corner and across the street from Town Hall, on Seale Street, was an old pub, the Merrie Monarch, named for Charles II, who was given sanctuary in Mont Orgueil Castle by Jersey’s Loyalist government (neighboring Guernsey was on the other side) when he was on the run from Oliver Cromwell and not yet so merrie. Later, after he had claimed the crown and Cromwell had suffered the singular fate of being posthumously beheaded, the grateful king presented Jersey’s faithful bailiff with a tract of land in America, between the Hudson and Delaware rivers. In 1776, this tract became one of the Thirteen Colonies—New Jersey.

  Possibly because of this history, but mostly because of its proximity to Town Hall, the Merrie Monarch had become a haven to the government workers, the pub of choice for an after-work pint. It was here that Carlisle went after leaving Makepeace’s office, almost without thinking about it.

  At this hour, five o’clock, the bar of the Merrie Monarch would typically be buried three deep in chatting, laughing mid- and upper-level civil servants: gentlemen in dark suits and ties, with a mug of beer in one hand and a cigarette in the other, their tightly furled brollies stowed in the umbrella stands. A few women would be among them, drinking sherry or ginger beer. Behind the bar, two men and a woman (Sadie, the proprietor) would be working at the beer taps as fast as they could, barely managing to keep up.

  Not tonight. With the island on the brink of subjugation by a hostile army, it would be a long time before those jolly scenes would be seen again. Only Sadie was behind the bar, and only Sadie was needed. At most, there were a dozen long-faced customers. Mostly, they sat in booths, talking quietly to the accompaniment of many sober shakes of the head. Nobody was doing any laughing. The place even smelled different. Without the usual fug of tobacco smoke to mask it, the odor of a century’s worth of spilled beer predominated. Not that Carlisle noticed it. He had gotten a pint of almost-black West Country stout from an uncommunicative Sadie, sat himself at the booth farthest from the bar, and, without being aware of it, opened a pack of Player’s.