Wrong turn

As commander of a western Sydney police squad, I check duty books, compile statistics and do management meetings. It's a merry-go-round, whereas undercover work is a rusting roller-coaster.

I take off the power suit and heels. I frizz out my blonde bun and delve into my undercover wardrobe: Double Bay luncher, hippie chick, rock chick, cokehead, junkie. Deciding on a bikie look, I lather the eye make-up on a little too thick, apply garish red nail polish and dangle a lot of Indian jewellery from my ears and wrists. I wish my nose piercing - obtained so painfully on the floor of a Kings Cross all-night chemist - had not closed up.

Homicide detectives brief me on their suspect. They think he has murdered three Aboriginal children in northern NSW. They caution me on the dangers of being so close to a killer and stress that I also mustn't get close to the informant - the guy who's going to take me to the suspect's house and try to get him to confess. As they turn to walk away, almost as an afterthought, they mutter something about the informant having been charged with murder, too. They're talking like twins, finishing each other's sentences, but I catch snippets: "He got off" ... "Done heaps of prison time" ... "Might be a contract out on him because he's ripped off some bikies" ... "Larger than life" ... "Bit of a psychopath." I am to pretend to be this guy's wife.

The first time I meet my new "husband", he bursts into the safe house like a cop on a bust, his fingers formed into a gun, tattoos rippling on his arms. "Hello, my name's Chainsaw," he says with a smile. He is big, bald and ominous. This is how he always enters rooms.

Since we are married, we have to get to know each other, get our stories straight. He talks about the bikies he is cooking for - and he doesn't mean their dinner. He speaks of crooked cops and shady deals. We get on really well.

"How did you lose your fingers?" I ask, pointing at his missing digits. "That was from the chainsaw when I was cutting up Lindy." I take it in my stride. Cool as. I never perspire. I can buy kilos of cocaine from Colombians with a suitcase full of cash. No sweat.

Chainsaw and I drive out to a three-pub town near Tamworth in northern NSW where the suspect lives with his wife and kids. It is an unusually well-resourced operation. Normally, I'd be on my own, but this time there's a vanload of police parked outside town listening. At least I hope they can pick up my signal.

I play with the kids or chat to the wife while Chainsaw tries to lead the conversation to the murders. What I've learnt after many years of undercover work is that there is no mark that identifies killers, drug dealers and other criminals. The people I've befriended and the organisations I've infiltrated are made up of normal people. They have families, children and pets. Sometimes I've seen a glint of evil in the cracks, but not usually.

The wife and I relate as only women can. We whinge about our husbands not doing enough around the house, then move on to child rearing. I feel my heart constrict. Chainsaw and I never discussed whether or not we had children. I say we don't have any and gloss over it. But what if she knows that he does have kids? Standing in the lounge room, I am furious with myself for stuffing up. I'm certain I've destroyed the operation. I gauge her reaction while scanning the exits. She walks to the bedroom and I wonder if I should leave. Is she getting a gun? Is she going to call her husband? I try to see through the venetians if the police are coming. The street is empty. I stand my ground and she returns from the bedroom and shows me a baby photo she has taken from the wall. My breathing returns to normal.

Chainsaw and I spend days together, going back to the suspect's house. Sometimes we come tantalisingly close to extracting a confession but get nothing concrete. Between visits, we drive in Chainsaw's ute and talk. He says his mum won't have anything to do with him. He wants to turn over a new leaf so she will be proud of him. That's why he's gone to the police. I see the softer side of him and we become quite close. A few years later I see Chainsaw in a newspaper article about the murder of a woman. He'd been acquitted of it and was alleging he'd been framed. I realise that this is the Lindy he'd told me he'd chopped up. Suddenly, she has a face. It allows my brain to catch up to what I knew all along: that while trying to get one killer to confess, another had come clean to me. Aside from the moral distortions this creates, there is a more pressing concern: what if he comes after me to eliminate the evidence? Things start to go a bit weird after that. It is the beginning of my career's end. After 13 years of undercover work, many crooks want me dead. There have been threats, contracts on my life and guns pointed at my skull. Crooked cops have given me up. It starts to do things to my head. And I start sweating.

I sweat on canteen duty now. Even putting on my makeup can bring it on. It takes me back to those days when I'd be donning the war paint to go to work. I still struggle to organise my thoughts enough to cook a meal, though my doctor, psychologist and the good folk at St John of God have helped me get it back together.

This isn't how it was meant to be. I'd expected to be a cop until I retired with pips on my shoulder. But in hindsight I see that within months of starting in the force, I'd taken a wrong turn into undercover work and it's hard to ever be normal again after that.

They got us young, before we started to look and talk like cops. Another girl, "Gabby", and I were given $50 between us and told to go buy some smack. One night they dropped us at the Coogee Bay Hotel, in Sydney's east. We were just kids floundering in the deep end. We drifted over to two good-looking young guys around the pool table. They had sticks of grass and they really wanted to help. That's another thing I found throughout my career: people truly want to help. I can still see those guys. They were just normal, young, attractive guys. "Here you go, have some of that ... Come to a party ... Let's go out."

We found out where they lived, their phone numbers, everything about them. After they were arrested, the supervisor paraded Gabby and me in front of them. "You sold to these girls." They buried their faces in their hands ... and they cried. I felt sick. Oh my god, have I ruined their lives? They're going to get a criminal record. Are they going to be able to get a job? It was just so sad. I spoke to Gabby about it. "I don't think I can do this," I said, before we saw the dark humour: "Out of all the guys in the pub who were selling, why didn't we go to the ones we didn't like and weren't attracted to?"

That's the difference between male and female undercovers. To the men, it's more of a business transaction. They might meet a dealer out in the open, all suss of each other. "Are you a cop?" Most will show the money to tempt the dealer, then quickly do the business. "Here's the drugs. Here's the money. See you later."

I took longer. I think it's a female thing. I formed relationships with people. I was invited to christenings and kids' parties. Most of the busts went down in their homes. I can't remember one operation where they were suspicious of me. I was never asked to show the money. The deception and betrayal bothered me, but my sense of duty prevailed.

There was one operation where I just walked into a pub in Riverwood, in Sydney's south, a week after there'd been a murder in the car park. I met this guy called Mack. He had tattoos all over him and was involved in drugs. When I was in the area I used to drop in and chat with him.

I drove a nice police Honda Prelude with pop-up lights. My story was that I had a bit of money from a compensation payout, but was working for a big boss buying speed. Over the following years, Mack never once wanted to know where I lived, but he invited me to his place.

It was always good when they invited you to their homes. It allowed you to check exits, hiding places, water sources where drugs could be flushed. I'd see photos and ask about the people and locations. And, being female, I could ask inane questions like their star signs to find out their birthday. Then you'd say, "Year of the dragon?" and find out what year they were born. Men couldn't get away with that. I used to be an expert on cows. I knew all the breeds. I can say all the books of the Bible by heart and recite The Man From Snowy River. I'd bring this stuff into the conversation. The crooks would go, "What is she on? She's no copper. She's too out there."

Mack used to give me Christmas cards and write me little poems. He drove an old Ford Escort, and he knew I loved the pop-up lights so he got some headlights and tied them to his bonnet with rope. "See now, I've got pop-up lights, too." He was a lovely guy. I'm sure he liked me and I liked him as a friend, but sometimes there were sexual overtones. "Let's go out," he'd say.

"We'll do this deal, then the big deal, and as soon as that's done we'll go out to dinner to celebrate." It was always after the big bust.

Mack introduced me to a speed cook who gave me a sample of the filter paper they use in the production process. When I got it tested, it was the highest purity they'd ever seen. The cook said he'd produce however many pounds I wanted. I left Mack out of the negotiations, but he became aware that I was going to buy five pounds of speed. He wanted to go with me. "I need to make sure you're okay," he said. "What if they rip ya off?"

"Don't worry, I'm a big girl." My superiors wanted him there because they'd read about him in my intelligence reports. They wanted him for conspiracy to supply. But I kept him out of the loop because I didn't want him going to jail just for trying to help.

The arrest was all screeching cars doing wheelies, me sprinting down the road with armour-clad cops chasing me, shotguns drawn. Afterwards, I told Mack and others that I'd bribed the cops with the drug money I had in my handbag. They all believed me. Mack was a good crook in that he never knowingly ratted on anybody. Yet over the years, he put me onto three major operations. All these people got arrested and no one ever thought to blame me, even though I was there at the scene each time. They thought it was Mack and they ended up putting contracts out on his life. Again, it was very sad.

It was my permanent afternoon shift. I drove from pub to pub, deal to deal, re-arranging my hair, my story and my name, depending on whether it was the cocaine, heroin or speed scenes. Whatever my bosses wanted, I did. When they asked me to get a job in a brothel that was dealing heroin, I did it.

The pimp looked me over in my little black crocheted dress: "All right, turn around." I was having one of those moments. Could my life get any stranger? "Okay, you'll do," he said. "Rooms are $10 for half an hour then $5 for every 15 minutes. Tissues are $2 a box. Condoms are free. New meat goes really well." A girl was told to share her spot on William Street with me. The girls were very territorial but we chatted and they seemed all right. I was petrified of the leering cars crawling by. Please don't pick me. My only backup was a pager. Stalling, I sat down for a while, chatted to some of the girls. They were friendly and supportive. "I might just get a feel for it tonight," I said, before making some excuse and leaving after a couple of hours.

Next night I went back, thinking I had it sorted. "I can't work tonight, I've got my period."

"Don't worry about that," the pimp said. "Just get a dental dam from the chemist." I'd never heard of this, but he explained what it was and what to do with it. I disappeared off to the chemist and didn't return. Over coming days, I continued to drop in to the brothel just to see the girls. The bouncer knew me now and let me upstairs. The girls tried to entice me to join them on the street, but I told them I was going to get into dealing - more profitable and less hours. We built a friendship based on drugs, but mostly we chatted about TV shows and boyfriends and kids. I'm always up for a chat. Must be my star sign. The kitchen at the brothel was like the women's toilet at a party - make-up, hair and talk. A lot of them had children and drug problems. They couldn't go get an office job.

I gathered some good intelligence, but didn't push for a bust on the girls.

I wanted to get out of undercover work and I topped the first phase of the detectives' course, but they wouldn't let me transfer out until I'd done three years undercover. It was really embarrassing because I'd never actually arrested, interviewed or charged anybody before. I didn't even know the phonetic alphabet and had to ask my junior partner to do all the "Foxtrot, Charlie, Tango" stuff.

Even as a detective, I kept getting called back into undercover jobs. A good undercover was hard to find and sometimes I even went undercover for my own investigations, delegating other detectives to do the formal interviews.

I was working as a detective in Parramatta when my old Escort-driving friend Mack's name came up as a person of interest. I rang the caravan park where he lived and spoke to the owner. "He's a nice guy," the owner said. "But he really wants to go back to jail because it's the only place he feels comfortable. He's got no friends and everyone's after him." I left a message under my real name for Mack to call me. He only knew me as Stacey.

He rang and I knew I shouldn't do it, but I needed to apologise.

"I'm Stacey," I blurted out, "and I just wanted to tell you I'm a police officer and I was an undercover police officer all that time ..." "No way. You can't be." When I convinced him, he said he didn't mind. "Will you come out and see me?" he asked.

I wanted to, but I knew it would be stupid. I felt so bad. If he was a proper informant he would have been paid and could even be living in witness protection. But because I'd tricked him into helping me, he was living in fear, out in the cold.

"I hope you're keeping out of trouble," I said. "Yeah, yeah."

I still think about him and his unhappy predicament. I think a lot about the lies I've told.

In 1998, I studied the ethics of deception in policing, particularly what they called the Dirty Harry dilemma: did the end justify the means? I knew that a lot of the suppliers I had set up were genuinely just trying to help me. They were not out there advertising their drugs or tempting innocents. But then again, they were drug suppliers, and I was just asking them to do business with me. I came away from that study feeling a lot better about myself.

A normal private life was difficult in this world. Back in the beginning of my undercover career, I'd had an ill-advised affair with a married colleague who had trained me and was my mentor. We lived together for nine tumultuous years. Twice we had the wedding booked, but we were not able to make it work in the real world.

He left the cops but continued his life of deception. He had an affair on the side, but I only realised how screwed up he had become when our house was raided by the police. It turned out he was somehow involved with Colombian drug cartels and truckloads of cannabis. He pleaded guilty, using his history of undercover work to explain that he'd flipped his lid. And maybe it was true. He got off with a good-behaviour bond.

My next boyfriend didn't even know my real name until I had to fess up when he was about to meet my family. He thought I worked in an office, while in fact one of my undercover jobs for the licensing branch at this time involved me being a bondage mistress and dripping hot wax onto the torsos of men strapped to a torture rack. Some office.

Everybody has a breaking point and I'm approaching mine when they beg me to do a job at Orange in the central west of NSW. I go out there and spend a lot of time buying a lot of heroin, speed and ecstasy from low-level dealers. Images from that job will stay with me forever. A girl called Michelle trying to inject herself at the kitchen table while her daughter plays with a pet mouse. "It won't go in," Michelle complains before moving the needle to a new spot on her arm.

I'm talking to a dealer called Scott at a pub when a woman comes in pushing a pram. He goes off to see the young mum then comes back to me, "I can't handle people who want credit."

I'm noticing the filthy and ignored children more now. Maybe I'm getting clucky, but it's doing my head in. I work my way up through the Orange scene until I get the area's main supplier on the phone. We arrange to do a deal on a park bench. This is going to be the big buy/bust. I've got a listening device on and for the first time in the whole operation I've got backup - but I don't know where they're hiding. Being an under-resourced country command, it's probably just a few detectives in unmarked cars around the corner. There's 15 grand in my handbag, and I'm sitting on that bench waiting as the sun goes down. He's late, so my mind gets time to wander. I have this feeling of déjà vu. How many times have I sat on a park bench with a bag full of money waiting for a crook? I feel vulnerable even though it's the most protected I've been in weeks. Fear gets into me as darkness falls. Normally I'd be desperate for the mark to turn up, but tonight I'm praying he doesn't. I can feel my body hunching, closing, like it wants to curl into a foetal position.

The crook is a no-show. But I leave that bench a wreck. I ring my supervisor: "I don't think I can do this any more. I think I've lost my nerve."

When I return home, my fiancé complains that I'm speaking like a druggie. My head's still out in the cold. I can't stop thinking about those poor children in those filthy houses.

I see the article about Chainsaw and "Lindy" and feel sure he will try to silence me. I start to see shadows in the night. I hear noises coming to get me. What's that car doing in the street? I can't drive anywhere in Sydney without passing a pub where I've met some crook, dudded a pretend friend.

I pass the assessment to become a police inspector and I'm not going to let a little fear get in the way. It will fade. So I push on. I keep getting asked to do undercover jobs, but I can't and won't. I get married and fall pregnant with twins. I see a psychiatrist but don't tell the hierarchy. I don't want these demons ruining my career.

When the twins come along, maternity leave stretches into extended leave, then leave without pay. At mothers' group at a playground, a woman calls out to me, "Stacey". The exposure suddenly links that horror world to my perfect motherhood world inhabited by the lovely playgroup mums. They don't know what I am. I just want to put a bubble over them all.

The episode reinforces that I can never escape. I get upset at the slightest thing. I shake, I'm permanently anxious about the twins, yet I feel detached from them. I should be so happy with these beautiful babies and beautiful husband. Why can't I be that person? I know too much and envy those who don't.

After two years off work, I go back, but have trouble finding childcare because I'm certain I'll run into some old target. At work, flashbacks of Chainsaw and that feeling I had in the park in Orange keep barging their way into my thoughts. Whereas previously I'd been focused and competent, I start dithering. I have sweating attacks while picking up the kids.

I last only three months back in the job before I'm off again, diagnosed with post traumatic stress disorder. I tell my bosses I'm feeling heaps better, should be back next week. I hope and pray that it is true, but my career is over.

I feel so bad. Like I'm deserting my post. They run tests on my brain and find that the trauma has shrunk a part of it. I misuse simple words and while I used to be good at Trivial Pursuit, now I'm a shocker.

My husband and I decide to sue the force, arguing that I was in the field too long with no care taken. They just used me up to get the busts. They knew that undercovers suffered over time. The standard tour of duty is two years. I did three years as a permanent and another decade part-time.

At my court case, witnesses say that if I hadn't gone into undercover work I would have been commissioner material by now. We lose the case and face bankruptcy but decide to appeal, because I know that everything I said was true and I hate the injustice. I was an honest servant of the state and had repeatedly risked my life. In return, I get bureaucrats willing to spend millions of dollars to crush me.

My husband is on board. "If we lose the house, it doesn't matter. If we have to go and live in a shack in the country, it's all right."

We win on appeal. And it's a massive payout - more than $1.6 million - still substantial after the lawyers take their cut. The costs were only finalised last year, freeing me now, emotionally and legally, to tell my story. Mostly now I'm just a footy-, baseball- and canteen mum with two wonderful kids.

I regret having got on the undercover rollercoaster because if I hadn't, I'd still be a cop - the only job I ever wanted. But at the same time I've got to admit it was a glorious time. I loved the battle of wits, overcoming my fears, pretending to be a different person. It's a rush, but it becomes an addiction.

And it's still with me. Last year, the family of one of my informants asked me to give a eulogy at her funeral. Her daughter kept telling me I was her mum's best friend.

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