A Lick Of Heat: H.E.A.T. Book Four

by Claire, Nicola

  If it looks like a duck and quacks like a duck, then you can bet your highly trained detective’s arse it’s a fucking duck. He might not have been the first to say those words, but Carl had a way of making you remember them.

  I was on suspension. It felt like I was on suspension. It looked like I was on suspension. Ergo I was on fucking suspension.

  And not all suspended cops made it back to the fold.

  “I am,” I said and Damon shook his head adamantly. “CIB is good for it,” I told him. If I said it as if I believed it then maybe I would actually make it back to CIB to be reimbursed.

  “I hear you’re no longer part of CIB,” Nick said, thinking my spoken words had been for him and not Damon.

  “Be careful who you listen to, Anscombe,” I told him, pushing the whole am-I-aren’t-I thoughts from my head. “There are a lot of liars around.”

  “Or manipulators,” he said.

  “What do you know of manipulators?” I asked.

  “It seems to me that you’re being manipulated as we speak even though you probably don’t believe it.”

  He wasn’t far off the truth. Everything we were doing was reactionary. Weston was making us chase our tails and scrabble to respond to his perceived threats. He probably had no intention of striking HEAT at Pitt Street again. And yet I was tying up resources, spending precious time Carole Michaels probably didn’t have, plugging a hole he had made especially for me.

  “CCTV at Pitt Street Fire,” I told ASI’s owner. “Monitored 24/7 both from ASI and on site here. I also want the monitoring system at Pitt Street slaved to the Police’s CCTV network throughout the city. When can you get it done?”

  Nick took his time answering. Probably deciding whether to accommodate my final demand or not. Finally, he said, “It’ll be done by five tonight.”

  “Good.” I moved to disconnect the call.

  “Keen,” Nick called out before I could hang up on the insufferable man. “You need anything else; don’t hesitate to call.”

  I blinked, but couldn’t answer. He’d hung up on me first.

  “What good is surveillance gonna do?” Horse asked.

  I pocketed my cellphone and said, “This just became ground zero. We work from here. All of us. And not just on your normal day to day duties. I’m seconding you all to CIB.”

  “You’re not in CIB anymore,” Marc carefully said, wincing when I glared at him.

  “Once a cop always a cop,” I told him. “Besides, this is family. Weston is after revenge on a member of this family. Family stick together. Call everyone in who isn’t here. Make sure their loved ones are as safe as they can be. From here on in, we work, sleep, eat at HEAT. We look out for each other. And we get this job done.”

  Flack, Marc and Horse looked at Damon.

  Damon was looking at me.

  “Ground zero,” he repeated slowly. I nodded. And then he nodded, sealing the deal.

  “What do you want Rescue to do?” Horse asked, pulling himself up to full height. He took up space on the couch; he took up more space when he stood up from it.

  “You guys are the most physical,” I said, receiving looks of pique in triplicate from Flack, Marc and Damon. I ignored them. Rescue was the musclebound heroes of HEAT. “I want you patrolling the grounds. You’re on-site security. Take it in shifts.”

  Horse nodded and rubbed his hands together. “This should be fun.”

  “And Prevention?” Marc asked.

  “You guys are on the CCTV. Once ASI sets it up, you’re going to have access to the entire city. I want you looking for key players. It’ll be boring but essential work.”

  Marc nodded; face serious, body tense. Prevention were perfect surveillance geeks.

  “And Investigation?” Damon asked.

  I looked toward him. “Investigating of course. You guys will be working with me, beating the feet. We’ve got cases to follow up — prisoners to question. Known haunts to check out. And past associates of Weston’s to follow up on.”

  “You’re turning us into a mini-CIB,” Damon said.

  “Not so mini and definitely not so CIB,” I told him. “We’re not doing this from behind the safety of the law. We’re also not doing anything overtly illegal either,” I rushed to tell them when they all bristled. “But we’re certainly not doing this with open permission from the police. I’ve been suspended. I’m officially out of CIB. Unofficially, I’ve been given my orders. And my orders are to find Weston and shut him down quickly.

  “So far, we’ve been dancing to his tune. CIB for all the good it does is a lumbering giant. It’s stuck in its ways and mired in mud. It also harbours a traitor.”

  Marc and Horse looked shocked. Flack didn’t. He already knew, but it was a strange relief to have it confirmed that he and Damon hadn’t brought anyone else in on it unnecessarily.

  Some things were too close to the heart not to cut when revealed.

  There was no point keeping it a secret from the men here in this room now, though. I was deputising the entire HEAT division. So they needed to know what they were up against.

  “We can do more distanced from CIB than within it,” I added. Hart had probably known this all along, and that’s why my suspension appeared an easy thing for him to accept and action. I pushed the inspector and CIB from my mind and concentrated on the team before me. My team now.

  “And on that note,” I said to them all. “This is where we’re at. Weston has Carole Michaels. He wants revenge on Damon. He’ll get it any way he can even if he does it through Damon’s loved ones. He’s a suspected undiagnosed psychopath. Certainly, one that hasn’t appeared in our system to date. But he’s also not inexperienced. He’s done this before. He uses fire as a preferred method of physical attack. But in all other aspects of his criminal behaviour, he is cunning.

  “Fire is his brute force, but manipulation and blackmail, two parts of his behavioural pattern, are not as base. And those two mixed in with murder and abduction make for a very dangerous individual indeed.”

  “He’s mad,” Flack said with disgust.

  “Yes, but don’t let that fool you,” I said. “It’s an intelligent madness. He’s kept one step ahead of us the entire time. Mainly due to the mole in CIB. He’s also managed to attack almost every single person at HEAT. Even aware of what he’s done and could do, he still managed to infiltrate the station and carry out another attack on one of you without you suspecting a thing until it was done.”

  Horse grunted out something that was definitely inappropriate for public consumption.

  “So, mad but clever,” Marc said, ignoring his teammate’s crass language skills. “And revenge by targeting anyone Damon cares about.”

  “Pretty much,” I said. “Using a pattern of behaviour we can track.”

  “Murder, abduction, manipulation and blackmail,” Flack offered, ticking the pattern off one by one on his fingers.

  I nodded my head.

  “How do we track all of that?” Horse asked.

  I fished into my pocket and pulled out a flash drive.

  “With this,” I said, placing it down on Damon’s desk.

  Twelve similar case files. Eight in Auckland. Two convicted in Mt Eden Prison.

  “We’re going to do some good old fashioned policing,” I told them. “Welcome to the club.”

  Chapter Ten

  “Trust Yourself, Lara. Above All Else Trust Yourself.”

  It was mid-afternoon before Damon, and I made our escape from HEAT. The place was a veritable hive of activity. Teams of two from Rescue patrolled the perimeter of the Fire Station property. Prevention, having decided they weren’t going to wait on ASI to complete installation of the monitoring system, were scouring newsfeeds and social media for hits on Weston’s known aliases and anything else that would give us a lead on where he had based himself this time. Investigation had split off into pairs as well, to look into locales around Auckland City that Weston had been seen frequenting in the past or Carole Michaels wa
s known to haunt on occasion.

  The activity had two distinct purposes. One, it kept everyone focused and busy, avoiding any buildup of frustration that could lead to mistakes and offer Weston an easy target. Keeping them working in two or more also meant everyone had backup should Weston strike again. I didn’t think he would so soon, but that was where the second distinct purpose of using HEAT as my support came in.

  Rhys Kyle Weston would not be able to miss what was happening at HEAT’s headquarters.

  I might not have thought to lay a trap for him before he struck at Horse this latest time, but I was certainly dangling the carrot in front of his nose now. I snorted softly to myself at that thought. Carrot. Horse.

  “What’s so funny?” Damon asked.

  “Wayward thoughts,” I told him.

  He glanced at me from the driver’s side of his ute. “I wasn’t aware you had wayward thoughts during an active op.”

  “Maybe the pressure’s getting to me.”

  “Lara, love, you thrive on pressure.”

  “I do not,” I said as I watched him navigate Mount Eden traffic. “You make it sound like I’m an adrenaline junkie.”

  “What’s so wrong with that?”

  I shook my head at him; he was only trying to distract me. Bring me out of myself. Or out of my thoughts.

  “There,” I said, indicating a parking space a good walking distance from the prison itself. I didn’t feel like negotiating the multi-storied carpark attached to the prison proper.

  I was beginning to feel like the walls were closing in on me. That could have been the impending visit to a maximum security corrections facility. Or it could have been something else.

  “How easy will it be to get in without your badge?” Damon asked, hitting the nail on the head without even realising it.

  “They know me,” I replied, shaking free of unwanted and phantom sensations, “so that might help. But otherwise, we’ll be heading in as general public. Afternoon visiting hours began ten minutes ago.”

  “Don’t you normally have to book in to see a loved one in these places?”

  “Yes,” was all I said, feeling the pressure to make this work mount.

  I didn’t enjoy the feeling, so Damon was wrong on that count. I was not an adrenaline junkie.

  Daman locked his HEAT truck up without a word. His silence was welcomed but also made me retreat inside my mind again. My mind wasn’t necessarily the best place to be right now.

  I worked on focusing instead on the environment. Checking shadows and taking a mental note of cars parked in the general vicinity of the prison itself. Mount Eden Prison, or Prisons as it consisted of two separate facilities, had housed prisoners since 1888. Parts of the buildings were still very much ancient in structure and appearance. In 2008 it was modernised, but the old girl still held a certain Victorian charm. Externally at least.

  Internally she was everything a modern day correctional facility should be.

  The person we wanted to see was housed in the prison itself and not the corrections facility part of the set-up. Our inmate had been at Mount Eden for three years already and had another two to go before possible release. From what I’d been able to ascertain in his case files, though, before being locked out of the Wanganui, Gregg Arnold Mansfield wasn’t likely to get parole when it came time to apply for it. He’d got into more fights inside the prison than he’d been charged with outside of it.

  But he’d also been charged with one count of abduction and two counts of blackmail. You can’t be charged with manipulation, but the court transcripts had noted he’d manipulated one of his employees in order to gain access to the female victim he had abducted. No one had been killed, so the fourth and final piece to Weston’s behavioural pattern was unaccounted for.

  However, he had damn near killed an inmate once he’d reached the cells in Mount Eden.

  He fit the search parameters enough to be flagged a possible copycat. The fact that he’d denied culpability the entire time he’d been on trial and after meant even if he was likely scum of the earth, he was possibly also Weston’s patsy.

  Weston had done this before, and although I couldn’t see a connection between the victim and him from the case files, I also knew she was his type. Addictive personality, dependency issues, and a near match for physical likeness to Carole Michaels.

  It was that last point that singled Gregg Arnold Mansfield out in my mind.

  The second prisoner at Mount Eden had abducted a kid. For the search parameters I’d entered into the Wanganui, he still fit. In my head and heart, he didn’t.

  Weston was a vile piece of work, but he was not a paedophile as far as I knew.

  We approached the modern part of Mount Eden Prison, where there was a visitation centre and the main reception area to the correctional facility as a whole. Everyone who wasn’t a part of the prison system itself funnelled through here. It was open and airy and made of thick glass and blocky architecture. And it butted up against the military blockade looking, red brick façade of the old part of the prison like an unwanted, outrageous cousin at a family reunion.

  We entered through the front doors without having passed through a security scanner once.

  Behind the reception desk and into the visitation centre, though, was a whole other thing. But first, you had to get past the dragons at the desk.

  I approached the reception, automatically going for my badge and finding my belt bare. My fingers twitched, but only for a second. I pulled my wallet out of my handbag and located my driver’s licence instead. It felt woefully inadequate as I handed it over.

  “Who are you here to see?” the man behind the counter asked, reading my name and details on the small plastic card I’d handed over.

  “Gregg Arnold Mansfield,” I said, checking the area for faces I might recognise. I recognised a woman whose partner I’d arrested ten months ago. Thankfully she wasn’t looking at me. And I caught sight of a prison worker I’d had dealings with on more than one occasion. Otherwise, the area was free of any faces that set off alarm bells.

  It was always a singular experience when entering a prison proper. Standing here in the reception area next to the clean and sterile looking visitation centre didn’t elicit the same sensations of reluctant imprisonment that visiting the cells themselves did.

  Damon handed over his licence and also his HEAT ID when the receptionist asked. Then whatever the chap had typed into the computer before him came up on his screen and he looked sharply at me.

  “You’re a police detective,” he said. It was almost an accusation.

  “Not today,” I offered.

  He studied me and then glanced back at his computer screen again.

  “There is nothing in the system for a visitation scheduled with that prisoner,” he said. “Did you apply?”

  “Didn’t have time. Is Charlie about?”

  The mention of his co-worker stumped him, but only momentarily.

  “I’m not at liberty to say,” he offered.

  This wasn’t exactly going how I’d expected, but the fact the guy was stonewalling me did make me feel the Department of Corrections was doing something right with its hiring policy.

  “Look,” I said, leaning forward slightly, “I’m on a tight schedule here and talking to this prisoner could save another life. It’s simple really; get Charlie Moon here, and he can take the heat if there’s any. Save you the trouble, right?”

  “You’re not here as a cop, Ms Keen,” the receptionist said, handing over my driver’s licence to me.

  “But I am here as an investigator from HEAT,” Damon offered.

  “What’s HEAT got to do with this prisoner?” the receptionist demanded.

  “I’m not at liberty to say,” Damon offered with a thin-lipped smile, repeating the guy’s words back to him.

  The receptionist stared at Damon and then slid his driver’s license and HEAT ID back across the desk, simultaneous pressing a button on his headset.

  “He
y, can you get Charlie to come out here, please?” he said into the device. “He’s got a visitor.”

  For the next few minutes, the receptionist completely ignored us. He also didn’t acknowledge anyone else waiting for access to the visitation centre. He sat with his head down and his eyes averted and pretended the world in front of his desk didn’t exist.

  Oh, to have that luxury.

  Charlie walked out eventually and looked toward him with a scowl on his face and then spotted me.

  “Detective Keen,” he called out. “Are you my visitor?”

  Several pairs of eyes turned to look at me, one of them shooting daggers. I ignored the partner of the criminal I’d put away and smiled at Charlie.

  “Yes, I am,” I said in way of greeting. Charlie approached, and I lowered my voice so only he could hear me. “I need your help, Charlie. I need in to visit one of your inmates, and I don’t have a badge to demand entry.”

  “No badge?” he said, looking from me to Damon and back again.

  “It’s complicated,” I admitted and then nodded to Damon. “He’s here from HEAT in an official capacity if that helps.”

  “It does,” Charlie agreed. “Come on,” he added and indicated we should follow him into the facility.

  I let out a breath of air and took a surreptitious look around the reception area. The woman whose partner I’d arrested was glaring at me. Several others were giving me the typical stink-eye you get when you’re a cop in the midst of known criminal associates. And one was watching from the shadows in the corner, behind the rim of a fedora hat that hid his facial features, whilst dressed in a trench coat that was beginning to become way too familiar to me.

  I hesitated, but only briefly. If Carl was here, it was to protect me. Or to make sure I was doing my job correctly. If he knew I’d been suspended from CIB, then it was logical he’d up his game to watch over me. It was a risk on his part but worth it no doubt to his fractured mind. Facing him now was pointless. The fact that I couldn’t exactly arrest him when I wasn’t exactly employed by the police anymore did factor into my decision to ignore his presence for now as well.