by Angus McLean
‘Why would they think they’re in the clear?’ Ace asked. ‘Two D’s have just been around asking questions. Probably even said they’re from Major Crime. Guys like that know who they’re dealing with, they know that a D knockin’ on the door is not a good thing.’
‘But if they thought we were barking up the wrong tree,’ Dan said, a glint in his eye, ‘if they thought we were looking wide, not focussing on them, and they knew there was no way they could be caught for what we were investigating...what would they do then?’
Ace frowned, mulling it over. ‘I see what you mean.’ He thought a bit more before giving a slight smile. ‘We scam them.’
‘Exactly.’ Dan grinned. ‘We scam them.’
***
The door at Mayflower was opened by Hoani’s cousin, Trey.
He was a lanky dude with a scruffy beard and an almost-Afro. His tatty black Snoop Dogg T-shirt stank of cigarettes and sweat. He scowled when he recognised Ace.
‘Whaddayawan’?’ he muttered, holding the door half open.
‘Morning Trey,’ Ace said. ‘Long time no see.’
Trey grunted. ‘Whatever. I ain’t on parole, got no bail conditions, so youse can just...’
‘This’ll only take a minute,’ Dan interrupted, ‘we haven’t got all day to waste on you either.’ He lifted the clipboard in his hand for Trey to see. It held a thick pad of printouts, coloured Post-It notes poking out the side. ‘We’ve got sixteen more doors to knock on today, so let’s get on with it.’
‘With what?’ Trey scowled at him. ‘I tol’ you...’
‘Yeah yeah, I know.’ Dan rolled his eyes. ‘No parole, no bail, I get it. It’s exactly why we’re here, Trey. You got a conviction for Agg Rob eight years ago, right?’
Trey scowled some more. Morning was not a good time for him. Any time talking to cops was even worse. He grunted.
‘Right?’ Dan persisted.
‘And what? I was a kid. It was nothin’.’
‘Yeah, well, it doesn’t go away. What it means is you made a list,’ Dan told him.
‘What list?’ He was curious now, circling round the bait.
‘You heard about the servo robbery the other day, in Otahu?’ Ace said. ‘Two dudes with a baseball bat robbed the gas station?’
Trey gave a flick of his eyebrows. They had him sniffing the bait now. He could tell there was something here of interest to him.
‘Well, bad luck for them, but they got sprayed with a UV spray when they ran out through the doors,’ Ace continued.
Trey looked at him. The scowl was still there, but a trace of a sly smile was starting to creep in. Nibble, nibble, but still cautious.
‘So we’re knocking on the doors of all the dudes in our patch with Agg Rob records.’ Dan hefted the clipboard again. ‘And here we are.’
‘Cops already come round th’ other day,’ Trey said, ‘they ain’t said about this. How come youse are here then?’
Dan shrugged, his face blank. ‘Dunno mate, who was it?’
‘A fat honky dude and a Islander fulla. D’s.’
Dan looked at Ace, who shrugged as well. ‘No idea. What’d they want?’
Trey hesitated now, realising he was painting himself into a corner. ‘Dunno. Jus’ come to see my little cousin, that’s all.’
‘Don’t know mate,’ Dan said dismissively, glancing impatiently down at his paperwork as if he wanted to just get on with it. ‘Look, this will take all of thirty seconds, and we can scratch you off the list. All we do is...’
‘I already gave DNA,’ Trey said defiantly, starting to shut the door.
Ace jammed his boot against it, blocking it open. ‘Don’t be a clown, Trey, just listen and get on with it. I’ve got better things to do than stand here breathing in your stink.’
Trey scowled again. ‘Why you always gotta be a dick?’ he growled.
‘It’s a lifestyle choice,’ Ace replied. He glanced past Trey into the hallway. He could see the shadow of someone standing in a doorway there.
‘All we do is shine a UV light on your upper body,’ Dan explained. ‘If it shows up that you’ve been sprayed, then that’s not so good for you. If there’s nothing then you’re all good and we move on to the next one. Understand?’
Trey looked away from Ace and gave a toss of his head. ‘Nothin’ on me.’ Nibble, nibble. More confident now.
‘Sweet, you won’t mind if we run the light over you then,’ Dan said, unclipping the lenser torch from the front of his stab vest. He set the selector to UV and looked expectantly at Trey.
‘Do I hafta do it?’ Trey asked, stalling.
‘Of course not,’ Dan said with a shrug, ‘but then we’d think you had something to hide, wouldn’t we?’
Trey grunted and smirked. He opened the door further. Chomp.
‘Gotta do it inside,’ Ace interrupted, ‘it needs to be in the shade, doesn’t show up properly in the light.’
Dan said nothing, but went with it, stepping forward to enter the house.
Trey hesitated, blocking the way. ‘Oh, eh...’
‘Who’s your friend?’ Ace said, looking past Trey again.
Trey started to turn, but the other guy stepped forward before he could say anything. He was a big guy, filling the doorway behind Trey. His mop of wild hair made him look even bigger. His arms hung out from his sides as if he was carrying basketballs. He was unshaven, maybe in his early forties. Prison tats covered his arms and hands, and he had a roll of barbed wire tattooed around his throat. He wore heavy boots, greasy jeans and a plain black wife-beater.
He scowled at both the cops.
‘None o’ your business who I am,’ he growled, ‘and you ain’t comin’ in without a warrant.’ He looked from one to the other, full of hostility. ‘So do whatchu gotta do and get lost.’
Dan felt himself getting riled and subconsciously stepped back. No point in making this idiot into an issue and blowing the whole deal. Still, backing down completely wouldn’t look right. It would arouse suspicions in already-paranoid people.
‘Pull your head in, Chuckles,’ he shot back, ‘we’re not here to see you.’ He pointed back into the house, indicating for the guy to make tracks. ‘Go do your hair or whatever you were doing.’
The guy bristled and puffed up. He looked like he was going to take it further. Ace took a step forward, his hands hanging loose at his sides. Dan couldn’t see his face, but knew he was giving the guy the dead eye. Ace did a good dead eye, and he could back it up too.
The guy took a moment, eyeballing them to make sure they knew he wasn’t actually backing down, before backing down and disappearing back inside without a word.
‘Right.’ Dan gave Trey his attention again, knowing Ace would be on full alert now. ‘Let’s get this done.’
Thirty seconds later the two detectives were walking back to the car. Nothing had shown up under the UV light, and Trey had given them a smirk as they acknowledged that he wasn’t their man. Chuckles had come back to the door to remind them to bring a warrant next time they came, and politely invited them to vacate the property forthwith. In his own special way, of course. Clearly English and grammar hadn’t been high on his agenda at school.
‘Tempting, wasn’t it?’ Dan observed as he started up the Commodore.
‘To drag him out and teach him a lesson?’ Ace was watching Chuckles giving them the bird from the front lawn as they pulled away. ‘You know it.’
‘Funny that he didn’t have a go, too.’
‘Didn’t strike me as the sort who’d usually back down,’ Ace agreed.
‘Gotta be a reason for that.’
Ace nodded. ‘Didn’t want us going in the house. It was worth it to swallow his pride this time, at the risk of seeming like a pussy.’
‘Pretty strong reason for him to do that.’
Ace looked at him. ‘You know it.’
He unzipped the front of his stab vest and removed a small black unit. He held it in his lap while he removed a biro pen from his f
ront patch pocket. It looked like a standard silver biro with a discreet logo stamped on it, the sort you got from well-heeled businesses. This one, however, was connected to the black unit by a thin lead going through a tiny hole in Ace’s vest. The black logo concealed a micro camera, and the pen itself was a microphone.
Ace connected the unit to his personal smart phone, and downloaded the data. He’d recorded the conversation, more out of habit than anything, but the priority was the photos. The camera was set to take a still shot every three seconds.
He quickly scanned through them before selecting several of the clearer shots and tapping up an email. He fired it off and put the phone away again.
‘Who you sending that to?’ Dan asked.
‘Oh, a contact in the Programme,’ Ace said vaguely. ‘He knows pretty much all the big players in the gang scene. Hopefully he’ll be able to ID that clown.’
Dan nodded silently. He had learned not to push with questions when it came to Special Programmes. He pulled over and grabbed his own phone instead, buzzing Buck.
‘All good?’ he asked.
‘Yep, in place. Nothing going on yet.’
‘Sweet. Keep in touch.’
***
Buck was in a scum car on Raglan Street, watching the only exit from Mayflower Close.
His job was to maintain a static obs point and give them a heads-up if anything happened after they left. Dan and Ace had gone in the opposite direction on Raglan, back towards the main drag.
Dan called Joe next, at the same time as Ace’s phone started ringing. He glanced over, getting Joe’s voicemail message immediately. Ace had his phone to his ear and was waving at him. Dan cut the call and listened as Ace put his caller on speaker phone.
Joe sounded excited. Like Buck he was in a static OP, sitting in the car park of a garden centre on Henwood Road, a long straight road that ran parallel to the South-Western Motorway on the other side of the Mayflower Close loop.
‘It’s a white Forester, he’s just parked it up and walked off up the alleyway. It’s definitely one of those kids though.’
‘Who?’ Dan asked, frowning. Joe was positioned to cover a walkway from Henwood up into Mayflower.
‘One of those turkeys we tangled with the other day, the one you were dealing with. I’m a hundy on that.’
‘And the car?’
‘I’ve just checked it. Stolen last night from Papakura.’
Dan and Ace looked at each other.
‘Could be a goer,’ Ace said.
Dan nodded. ‘Stay there Joe, we’ll get a plan together and come back to you. Let Buck know.’
Ace cut the call. ‘Plan?’ he said. ‘What is this thing you speak of?’
Dan flicked over some pages on his clipboard, running a finger down the page he wanted. It was the day’s schedule of cash-in-transit runs, supplied by the security company. He looked up at Ace.
‘There’s a run to Mangere town centre arriving in...’ he checked his G-Shock, ‘twenty five minutes.’
Ace cocked an eyebrow. ‘So we interrupted their morning’s plans,’ he said coolly. ‘Best we get tooled up.’
One of the TCU’s cars was a silver Commodore equipped with a gun safe in the boot. TCU were working a late shift, so they had borrowed the car for the morning.
‘Let’s do it.’
Dan wheeled the car into the car park of a Samoan Christian church and pulled up. He popped the boot and unlocked the safe affixed to the ceiling of the boot, sliding it open. Secured in the foam lining of the tray were two sets of HAP-Hard Armour Plating-a Bushmaster M4 rifle, and a holstered Glock 17 pistol.
He grabbed the Glock and slipped the holster into his belt clip, before drawing the weapon and popping the magazine out. He checked the chamber was empty before slipping the magazine in, racking it, and re-holstering the weapon. He took the spare magazine in its pouch and clipped it to his belt.
Next he donned a set of armour. It was a simple set up of twin hard plates, front and back, with straps over the shoulders and on each side. He pulled the straps tighter, made sure he could still breathe, and adjusted the weight on his shoulders.
Ace was ready, wearing his armour and with the rifle front-slung. Locked and loaded, ready to go.
They nodded to each other. Dan closed the gun safe. His phone started to ring as he shut the boot.
***
From his position in the unmarked white Hiace, Joe had a clear view across to the white Subaru. A couple of large palm-type trees at the front of the garden centre gave some measure of concealment, and the van fit in with the light truck he’d parked beside.
Since first spotting the Subaru being dropped off just a few minutes ago, he’d barely taken his eyes from it. His adrenaline was pumping. This felt right; all the pieces fit. He knew it was on. Robbers always used stolen cars, and Subaru’s were a favourite. If he was a betting man, he’d have put money on the car being brought there for the guys from Mayflower to go and do a job.
They would dump the car within a klick or so of the robbery, swapping it for another stolen car. The second car would be the real getaway vehicle, taking them further away from the scene before also being dumped or given to another associate to get rid of, before the robbers made their way home or to a temporary safe house.
Usually they would be picked up by a girlfriend or some gofer, a wannabe. There may even be a third car in the mix. What happened at that stage didn’t matter right now. What did matter was that he was sat here with eyes on a stolen car, just metres from a gang of suspected armed robbers.
This was what being a detective was all about. This was it. It was game on.
Suddenly he saw movement. A person emerging from the walkway, heading straight for the Subaru. The same kid as he’d seen earlier. The kid looked anxious now, his movements jerky and nervous, looking all around. His eyes swept across the garden centre, the van, the truck, back to the Subaru.
Joe grabbed his phone and tapped Dan’s number.
The kid got in the Subaru and pulled away, even indicating as he moved off from the kerb.
Dan answered quickly.
‘Same kid came back,’ Joe said without preamble, ‘he’s in the Subie, heading towards Haddon...and into Haddon now.’
Haddon St was a left turn. It would take him up to Raglan, where he would go left again and into Mayflower.
Dan sounded calm. ‘Looks like it’s a goer. Stay there, just in case. I’ll be in touch.’ He disconnected.
Joe put the phone back down. Dan had said to wait, but he was itching to move. His hand touched the ignition key and he was about to fire it up, before he stopped himself. There was always the chance the kid would come straight back for some reason, or he’d have a spotter watching his back to keep an eye out for the cops.
Dan was probably right. Or maybe Inspector Newlands-Biddy-was right. She’d never said it in so many words, but she obviously thought he was a cowboy. Otherwise, why would she ask Joe to keep an eye on him? And Kennedy definitely didn’t like him.
Maybe they were right. Dan and Ace were taking the lead roles on this job, and Dan’s protégé Buck was playing second fiddle. Meantime, here he was, sitting backstage and watching from behind the curtains.
There was a party going on, and he wasn’t invited. His earlier buzz was rapidly subsiding.
‘Damnit!’ Joe slapped the steering wheel in frustration.
He thought about Biddy for a moment, and his frustration melted away as he recalled the touch of her skin. It had been a surreal weekend. The phone call on Friday night. The drinks. Back to her place. The rest of the weekend was a steamy blur. He found himself grinning like a fool. She was one lady who knew what she wanted. And this weekend, it had been good ol’ Joe Malone.
He gave himself a mental slap. Plenty of time later to daydream. It was time to focus on the job at hand.
***
The scum car was a green Mazda MPV, and it smelt like wet socks. Buck didn’t dare turn the air con on, in case the
beast went flat. He could imagine the ribbing he’d get for that, and the added level of comfort wasn’t worth the risk.
He sat slumped in the driver’s seat instead, his baseball cap low over his eyes and the windows cracked just enough to ensure no build-up of condensation.
He jumped when the phone vibrated in his hand and he hit the talk button. Dan’s voice came through his ear bud.
‘The car’s heading towards you on Haddon. Stand by. I’ll stay on the line.’
Buck didn’t move, just kept looking down at the copy of the local rag in his lap. He saw the white Subaru Forester approach the T intersection at Haddon and Raglan.
It stopped, indicated, and moved left. A moment later it was going left into Mayflower.
‘Gone into Mayflower,’ Buck said, ‘one-up. Young male Maori, black T-shirt.’
‘Got that. We’re tooled up and waiting by the church on Raglan. Keep your eyes open and call me as soon as it moves.’
‘Roger.’
They disconnected and Buck shifted to get more comfortable. Criminals were notoriously unreliable, so it would probably be a long wait.
Chapter Seventeen
‘Better call Comms,’ Dan said, ‘see if we can get Eagle to do a flyover. Better call the AOS commander too, see if they’re available.’
‘That run’s in twenty three minutes,’ Ace noted, ‘if they’re on, they’ll be moving soon. AOS won’t get out in time.’
The Armed Offender Squad was a voluntary unit of staff from all over the Metro Auckland area. Members were paged for callouts and deployed from the Auckland Central Police Station. Ace was right; there was no way they would get on the ground before the job went down.
‘That’s if they’re targeting the first run,’ Dan said. ‘They may just be getting ready to move later. I better give them a buzz anyway. Give Eagle a shout, will ya?’
He started scrolling through his phone for the AOS commander’s number, and Ace called Comms on the radio. Suddenly Dan’s phone buzzed with an incoming call.
Buck. He was fizzing as soon as the line opened.
‘Coming left towards you,’ he babbled, ‘at least three-up. Couldn’t see any guns or anything but the car’s full and they’re on the move.’
