Switcheroo (A Gideon Oliver Mystery Book 18)

by Aaron Elkins

  “This guy,” John whispered, taking it in, “is gonna be all business. A hardnose. Rotsa ruck, pal.” As an Asian, a Chinese Hawaiian, John felt he could get away with that kind of thing. He was usually right, but it had gotten him in trouble more than once. Being John, he was unaffected by this.

  Rafe, preceding them to the open door, rapped on it. “Mike? We’re here.”

  There was a grunt from inside. Rafe stepped out of the way and gestured for Gideon to precede him, which he did.

  CHAPTER 12

  Gideon found himself looking across the office to a large, battered corner desk with a large, battered man behind it. About sixty, thick necked and thick chested, with a meaty face and a nose like a slightly smushed zucchini, he wore a crisp, spotless white shirt with its sleeves folded neatly back over thick, hairy wrists. The shirt was buttoned to the top to allow the fastening of a sober blue tie around his eighteen-inch neck. He looked like a dockworker uncomfortably—and unwillingly—decked out in his Sunday best and itching to get back into his worn-out old cords and flannels. He was looking straight at Gideon with a broad, pleased grin on his slab of a face.

  “Hullo, there, lad. Here to boggle the minds of us poor, benighted coppers, are you?”

  “Surprise” didn’t begin to cover it. For a couple of seconds, Gideon just stood there with an incredulous grin on his own face. “Mike Clapper! What in the world are you doing here? The last time I saw you—”

  “I was an old relic of a constable sergeant in the Isles of Scilly, yes.”

  “And now you’re an old relic of a detective chief inspector in Jersey. How did that come about? Detective chief inspector, wow. Congratulations!”

  “Amazing, is it not? The Home Office continues to leave no stone unturned in its efforts to keep me the hell off the British mainland, and this struck them as one of the safer places for me to eke out my few remaining years of employment without doing too much damage to the reputation of our police services. Ah, and this, I presume, is the gentleman from the FBI?”

  “John Lau, Detective Chief Inspector,” John said.

  Clapper waved that off. “‘Mike’ will be fine, thanks.” He got up and came around the desk, welcomed the three of them with handshakes—Gideon got a vigorous two-handed one—and seated them all at a grouping of a few weathered and mismatched leather armchairs around a low table at the other end of the room.

  “Now, then,” he said, squeezing between the arms of his own chair.

  But Rafe held up a finger. “A note before we proceed. As usual, gentlemen, Mike is selling himself short. The reason he’s here is that we asked for him, because—”

  Clapper’s chair creaked as he shifted in it to the extent he could. “Ancient history, Rafe. I don’t see the need to—”

  “No, before we go any further, I insist on setting the record straight.” He turned slightly to address John and Gideon. “And I speak whereof I know, being a member of the chief minister’s appointments commission. The gentleman you see before you is in this office because our CID had, for several years, been moving in a . . . a softer direction, shall we say, with increasing attention to internal diversity, team building, community relations, and so forth and a resultant lessening emphasis on traditional police work. Now, it goes without saying that diversity and community outreach and police morale are good things, but not if they put at risk the primary function of a police force, which, in my increasingly unfashionable opinion, is the enforcement of the law.”

  He paused to see if John and Gideon agreed with him. They did and so indicated with nods. Clapper looked a little out of sorts, uncomfortable with the plaudits that he sensed coming. He fidgeted with opening a pack of cigarettes and getting one lit. Still loyal to the Gold Bonds he’d smoked in the Scillies, Gideon saw.

  “And so we created a new position of community resources liaison, packed the then head of the CID off to it—where I daresay he finds himself better suited and much more at home—and petitioned the Home Office for their recommendations of experienced officers who knew police work from the ground up, who could apply rules and discipline firmly and fairly, who had the ability and self-discipline to implement serious change and to see it through, and whose reputations and comportment were likely to command the respect of colleagues, subordinates, and the general public.”

  John laughed. “Is that all? They must have come up with thousands of possibilities.”

  “Of course they couldn’t find anybody like that,” Clapper said, “not in this world, and so they settled for me instead.” He had gotten his cigarette lit and flapping at the corner of his mouth while he spoke, and he no longer looked quite so crabby. No matter how much people might resist hearing themselves praised, there aren’t many who are impervious to it.

  “On the contrary, we found the perfect person,” Rafe insisted. “We thought ourselves lucky at the time, and we think so even more now, a year later.”

  Gideon didn’t doubt it. If there was anybody in England who could come close to meeting that formidable set of criteria, Mike Clapper was the man. He had applied to be a policeman to the Devon and Cornwall Constabulary late, at forty, having newly retired from the army as a regimental sergeant major—the very top of the noncommissioned pile. He’d been accepted and then graduated first in his class from the National Police Training Center in Hampshire. Only two months after that he’d received a chief constable commendation for actions over and above the requirements of the service, the only one of its kind ever awarded to a probationer. Off duty, out of uniform, alone, and weaponless, he had broken up an armed robbery, subduing the two perpetrators and sitting on them (literally, in the case of one) until a couple of police cars could get there.

  More citations and awards followed. He became the first three-time recipient of Devon and Cornwall’s Officer of the Year Award. The BBC featured him in a television special (England’s Finest). In less than ten years he’d become a well-respected detective chief inspector and one of the most famous cops in England.

  But then came the one adversary he couldn’t handle: political correctness in all its many forms. There were in-house complaints against him from the Gay Police Association and the Diversity Enhancement Task Force: his unit was “disproportionately” male, white, and straight, and he showed little interest in changing things. That was the point at which circumstances—and modern times—had begun to turn against him, but he had thoroughly sealed his doom with his heartfelt but impolitic response at the last of his three hearings. One question, one accusation, one straw too many, and the camel’s back had snapped. Clapper’s reined-in frustration had burst through:

  “Look, what I want in my people is intelligence, drive, and ability. I don’t give a rat’s arse if they’re white or green or yellow, or Mr. bloody Fred Bloggs himself, and I sure as hell don’t give a rat’s arse whether they wear knickers, or Y-fronts, or no flipping underpants at all.”

  It made him famous all over again but infamous to the brass who made the decisions. Steps were begun to get rid of him, but the Police Federation—the police union—came to his defense, even though, as a department head, he was not a member. Eventually, a compromise was reached: Clapper would be transferred from the large port city of Plymouth to the obscure, virtually crime-free outpost of the Isles of Scilly, thirty miles off the southeast coast of England, where he could harmlessly serve out his time without getting into trouble or offending anyone. The compromise consisted of his rank being downgraded to constable sergeant but his grade for pension purposes remaining that of chief inspector.

  Gideon, working at the time on some bones discovered on a deserted Scillies beach, encountered him not long after Clapper had arrived at his new post. The relationship had started poorly. Gideon found Clapper arrogant, plodding, and narrow-minded, while Clapper thought Gideon was a modern version of some carpetbagging Old West “professor” going from town to town using long-winded academic speak to peddle his miraculous nostrums. More than that, he was treading, witho
ut invitation and not any too lightly either, on Clapper’s own turf.

  But circumstances had forced them to work together, and before long not only had they gotten to like each other, but their initial views of one another had been turned upside down. Gideon, Clapper saw, was a real scientist who had useful skills to offer and offered them generously. And Clapper, Gideon realized, was as thoroughgoing, knowledgeable, and resolute a cop as he’d ever met. An old-fashioned flatfoot in the very best sense of the word.

  A perfect fit, Gideon thought, for the job they’d brought him to Saint Helier to do.

  “Senator, have we finished with the bloody encomiums?” Clapper asked now.

  “Unless you’d like to deliver one in my behalf?” Rafe suggested.

  “Well, let me think.” He cogitated for a few seconds, then cleared his throat and turned to John and Gideon. “Rafe’s a bit of all right,” he said, “a long-winded chappie, but a pretty good bloke in spite of it. Will that do, Senator?”

  Rafe laughed. “And there you have Mike’s one failure. An unfortunate tendency toward hyperbole.”

  “It’s a terrible thing to live with,” Clapper said. “I just can’t help myself. Now then, Rafe, I looked over those case files this morning, and I have some idea of what was involved. But will you tell me one more time just what it is you expect Gideon to do for you?”

  “I’ve asked him to have another look at my father’s remains to see if modern forensic science can tell us anything that couldn’t be determined in those ancient days. Is it really my father, for one thing; are there any indications of the cause of death, for another? What was it that really happened back then?”

  “Well, as the man’s son and the owner, so to speak, of those remains, you don’t need my approval or anyone else’s to have them looked at.” Clapper took a long drag on his cigarette and blew out a haze of thready smoke. He wasn’t a chain-smoker, but when he smoked, he really smoked, sucking in great lungfuls of air and staying with it right down to the filter tip. “But tell me this: What role do you expect the CID to take in this matter?”

  Gideon knew what was troubling him. Even Mike Clapper wasn’t immune to the natural mind-set of cops toward closed cases: Let ’em stay closed. Leave ’em be. In their defense, there was something to the attitude. Partly it was because reopening an old case never failed to mean a flood of paperwork and explanations, but mostly because it was the nearest thing to popping the lid off a can of worms. Not only couldn’t you get the things back in, but once out they were likely to crawl into crevices that you preferred to leave unexplored.

  But before he could say anything, John said it for him. “Mike, we don’t expect to involve you at all. This is strictly a courtesy call, my suggestion. We just thought that if we were poking into old police affairs, you would want to know about it and you’d prefer to hear it from us first. I know that’s the way I’d feel.”

  A mollified Clapper nodded. “And I do, John, I do, indeed.” The Gold Bond was ground out in an oversize pub ashtray that held the mashed butts of four or five earlier ones. The Rousted Seaman, read the logo circling the rim, inside of which a grizzled, gap-toothed old salt in a sailor’s cap and a red-striped shirt merrily hoisted a tankard, although he was in for trouble if he didn’t get the pipe out of his mouth before it got there. “And if there is anything I can do—”

  “Actually,” Gideon said, “now that you mention it—”

  Clapper rolled his eyes. “Blimey, I’ve gone and put my foot in it this time, haven’t I? I knew it before the words were out of my mouth. You’d think I’d have learned by now.”

  “Nothing to put you to too much trouble, I promise, but if you could let me have a copy of the medical report on those remains—”

  Clapper nodded.

  “And if one on George Skinner still exists, that’d be good to have too.”

  “Skinner, Skinner,” Clapper said. “Isn’t that . . .” he hesitated, trying to remember who George Skinner was. He had, after all, become familiar with the case only this morning. “Oh, yes, the other one, the first one found, the one who was shot in the heart.”

  At this point an alarmingly young-looking police officer with stiff, corn-colored hair and black-rimmed glasses appeared at the door and stood waiting, not quite at attention, military style, but close.

  “Coffee, anyone?” Clapper said. “Tea? No? No takers, Constable. Oh, hang on there, Tom. That file you got for me earlier? There’s a postmortem report in there. Will you make a copy for me? And then if you can find one on a man named George Skinner—another homicide—I’ll want that too. That would have been a bit earlier . . .” He looked at Rafe.

  “Nineteen sixty-four,” Rafe told the officer.

  “Right away, sir.” The young cop looked as if he didn’t know whether to salute or not and decided on a halfway gesture that could be interpreted as one if necessary but didn’t look too ridiculous if it was out of place. He turned smartly and went in search of the files.

  “Gideon, I’ve just had a thought,” Rafe said. “Would you be interested in seeing the actual remains? George Skinner’s remains?”

  “Sure, I would, but do you have access to them?”

  “I just might.”

  “Jesus Christ, Rafe, don’t tell me they’re in your garage too,” John said. “Mike, I’m starting to think you better have someone go out and see what else he’s got in there.”

  Rafe burst out laughing. “No, no, I don’t have George’s bones. They were returned to his family, and I’ve always assumed he was cremated, but now it occurs to me that he may have been interred instead. George’s son would certainly know, and if he was buried, I believe Abbott might agree to have him exhumed for Gideon to examine. He wants to know what happened as much as I do. Well, almost.”

  Gideon was shaking his head. “I don’t know, Rafe, having a body exhumed is a complicated undertaking that’s bound to take some time, and I won’t be here that much longer. Besides, it’s not cheap. Are you sure Abbott—”

  “Oh, I’d pay for it, of course, that goes without saying. But if he approves, you’d be willing to examine the remains, wouldn’t you?”

  “Sure, I’d be glad to, but are you sure—”

  “That’s settled, then,” Rafe said, jotting a note in a small, leather-bound pad he’d taken from the inside pocket of his suit coat. “I’ll pop in on Abbott and find out. Today, if possible. Haven’t seen him for a while anyway.”

  “Abbott Skinner,” Clapper said reflectively, tapping his lower lip. “Would that be the same Abbott Skinner that was involved in the Mumbai Global prosecutions?”

  “Yes, it would. That’s Abbott, all right—George’s boy.” He thought it necessary to elaborate to Gideon and John. “He wasn’t the subject of the prosecutions, you understand, quite the reverse. He’s a banker himself, and he assisted the Crown, serving as one of their witnesses at the trials.”

  “Their prize witness, I’d be inclined to say,” Clapper said approvingly. “The one that made all the difference. You’ll have to get a permit from the Health Department, you know.”

  At the round of puzzled looks, he added, “For Mr. Skinner’s exhumation.”

  Rafe frowned. “That’s right, we will, won’t we? That’ll throw a spanner in the works. Health is notoriously slow about such things. I suspect it’ll take a fortnight to process. Do you have that much time, Gideon?”

  “Two weeks? No, I’m sorry, can’t stay anywhere near that long.”

  “Not to worry,” Clapper said. “Let me take care of it. I’ll see if I can’t accelerate the process.”

  “It won’t make much difference unless they get going on the digging tomorrow—the next day at the very latest,” Gideon said. “I figure the exhumation itself is bound to take at least one more day after that, and four days are about all I have before we have to get going. Can you really get it through as quickly as that?”

  “Not ordinarily, no,” Clapper said with a smile. “However, I am not above the
occasional exploitation of my position to, ah, move things along in a propitious manner when required. I’ll get it started this afternoon. Assuming the son approves, you’re in business. If not, no harm done.”

  They bantered a bit longer, mostly about the Scillies, which Rafe knew from a visit the previous January, until the constable returned, empty-handed.

  “They’re quite busy, sir. They’ve asked if you can wait an hour for the Carlisle postmortem report, but if you need it now . . .”

  Clapper looked at Gideon. “Do we need it now?”

  Gideon shook his head. “No, I want to look at the bones themselves first anyway.”

  It was a principle he stressed to his students and one that he stuck to himself (which wasn’t true of all of them): the law of expectancy applied to anthropologists as much as to anyone else. You see what you expect to see. The fewer expectations you have, the more objective and open-minded you’re going to be. And so if you are about to examine a set of skeletal remains for which you are lucky enough to have an autopsy report available, or perhaps the results of an earlier forensic examination, go ahead and read it—but not until you’ve examined the remains for yourself and come to your own conclusions. Then compare.

  “And the one on Mr. George Skinner?” Clapper asked Tom. “Also an hour?”

  “I’m afraid the Skinner report is, er, unavailable, sir.”

  Clapper cocked an eyebrow. “Unavailable,” he repeated, or rather growled.

  “Missing, sir,” the constable replied and then went nervously on. “There’s a removal card in its place, signed by a Sergeant Lavoisier in 1964, but no indication of its ever having been returned.”