The Valley (30 page)

Dear John,

I know all about you so I thought I owed you an account of who I am.

Some of it you already know: I really was bought up in New Zealand and moved to England when I was a teenager. I enjoyed playing hockey and I had a father who drank, just like I told you. Other parts would take too long to describe in a letter: like why I joined the police; how I started working undercover roles; what made me marry another police officer; the pain of giving birth to a premature baby who was never going to live; the depression, alcoholism and divorce that followed; and the wretched attempt I made to resurrect my career, not because I enjoyed my job, but because it was all I had left.

For several years, I bounced from department to department inside the Met like an unwanted penny. I was just completing an unsuccessful stint in the Serious Fraud Office, drinking heavily and bored out of my mind, when I saw the flash alert for a female detective in her thirties with undercover experience to help in a joint SFO-Murder squad operation. I was the only volunteer.

In the hastily arranged briefing, I was told the SFO had been interested in Max Grainger’s hedge fund for some time. They even had an informer in the Caymans. But then he disappeared so an undercover officer was sent over to Marbella where Lucy Grainger was spending a lot of time by herself. He reported back that she was nervous but seemed to be on the edge of confessing something. Then she flew back to London and vanished into thin air.

Max had a cast iron alibi, of course. But then you turned up: the last person to see Lucy alive, who also just happened to be Max’s oldest friend and desperate for his money. I was told that under interrogation you tied yourself in knots. More background digging revealed your ex-wife had moved on but you had not. The Murder Squad detectives reckoned that if a sporty looking blonde crossed your path, you’d take another look.

No one probed my mental readiness for the assignment too deeply – there wasn’t time. I looked the part, I had done undercover before, I was willing to start immediately, and my existing boss was only too happy to release me. British Airways was leaned on to provide me with an identity card, an email address, a uniform and a thirty minute session in a 747 flight simulator. The support team found a flat in your mansion block which we could rent for two weeks. I was given the keys and a new mobile phone. Another undercover officer agreed to loiter on your doorstep pretending to be a photographer, creating an opportunity for me to rush out and help you chase him away, then offer you tea and sympathy back at my flat. We even got the forensic boys to trash your flat a bit to make you more vulnerable.

Things did not quite go to plan that first night, because you surprised us, but I successfully made contact next morning. From then on, nothing was left to chance. I was ordered to wear the same perfume as your ex-wife, encouraged to bond with your kids, play up our mutual background as ex-pats, talk about growing up as a teenager without a father around; anything and everything that we had in common I had to exploit.

But bonding is a two-way process. As our conversations grew longer, my notes became briefer. Alarm bells should have been ringing but no one wanted to ask awkward questions. Max was still a priority; you were our only lead into him; and I was our only lead into you.

I tried to dampen things down myself, arranging for DS Clarke to crash our romantic dinner. But emotionally I had already switched sides by the time I was told to bring everything to a conclusion. All I had to lure you to a cottage for a weekend, where two other offices could observe you. On the Saturday I was supposed to soften you up, then on Sunday morning you would be arrested and turned. They knew exactly which psychological buttons to press: Karen, your kids, your business, your feelings for me. I had given them everything they needed to break you.

Except on that Saturday morning, I said I could not go through with it. They whisked me away with Jane. You were told I had gone to a market. In reality I was inside a police van, being read the riot act. At the end, I was given a simple choice: pull out now and my career was ruined, or soldier on for another twelve hours and the Met would give me anything I wanted – leave, promotion, transfer to another department, an honourable discharge – it was all on offer. But I had to go back into the cottage and deliver you up.

I told them I’d do it. It was only one more day of betrayal, after all. I even persuaded myself I could soften the blows by breaking up with you in advance. But I hated what I was doing, and by the evening, I had started drinking to anaesthetise myself from what was happening, polishing off half a bottle of vodka in my bath. That made me think about how long it had been since I had slept with a man I actually liked, and how nice it would be to go to bed with you. And then I realised that the trap that had been set for you could not be sprung if the bait was tainted. I was the bait, and if I slept with you, by the morning I was going to be very, very tainted. In one single act, I could make amends for all the deceptions I had played on you.

So it wasn’t just drunken desire that made me tiptoe into your room that night. But as I lay waiting for dawn, sobering up, I realised the enormity of what I’d done. I knew my life was about to be turned upside down – and all for a man who would probably despise me anyway when he knew who I was. Then I ran into Jane in the corridor outside your room, and suddenly there was no retreat.

I was taken from the cottage straight to a detention centre. Before I was even allowed out of the car they made me leave a message on your answerphone and hand over my mobile. I was kept inside the centre for a fortnight. When they finally let me out, they put me on a charge and told me I would be arrested if I ever contacted you. I was sent to a station in Liverpool and had to work an eight hour shift in an office all by myself. I was advised not to go into the canteen because word had already leaked out about what I had done.

Someone once told me there was a secret union of ex-undercover detectives, who would always try to help an undercover officer who messed up. The sex thing ensured that not all of them rallied to my cause, but enough did. The disciplinary board heard how I had pleaded to come off the case, and about the baby I had lost, and my struggles with alcohol. I was sounded out about a possible deal. For three months I would stay on the Force, but be posted on sick leave to a dependency treatment centre. That would take me up to my twelve years service, and I could then retire on grounds of stress. I would even be given a small pension. But in return I had to promise that I would never contact you again.

And that was the sticking point. I did not really think we had a future but at the very least, I wanted to tell you what I had done and why. And so the stalemate continued, until they showed me a confidential file. It was full of photographs of you with Karen, your ex-wife, and your children, in a London park. Jack and Tom were playing with a toy-yacht in a pond, and everyone seemed so happy. I asked what had happened to Karen’s boyfriend and I was told he was no longer on the scene, and you and she had got back together.

I signed my agreement with the Met that afternoon. And that would have been that if you had not called me on a mobile number I’d never used at work. I was back in London on weekend leave from the treatment centre, all by myself, and feeling so miserable that when my phone rang I did not even take the call. But after a while, my curiosity got the better of me and I listened to your message.

You sounded frightened and that reminded me that I had not quite wiped the slate clean. Then I heard you say that you loved me. I tried to call you back but your phone was off the hook. I knew then that I had to see you. As I left my home, I grabbed my police badge, thinking it might help me explain everything. When I reached your flat, I pressed the buzzer. There was no reply but when I looked down towards your window, I could see the lights were on and I thought about the fear in your voice when you had called. Then I remembered the patio at the back of your flat. On my way to it, I felt I was being followed.

You know what happened next. Sometimes, in the middle of the night, I remember bits and wake up screaming. But in the end you took care of me and then I took care of you and that’s all that matters. Afterwards the Met did not know whether to treat me as a heroine who had prevented a murder or a criminal who had broken the terms of her parole. Eventually, they decided that I was simply an embarrassment and let me disappear again.

I’m living in Wales now in a one bedroom flat in a small village. I completed my course at the clinic and haven’t had a drink since. I work as a classroom assistant in the local primary school. In the afternoons I teach the children how to play hockey.

The valley I live in is very different from the one you used to talk about. The whole village is worth less than some of the houses that used to surround your flat, and a classroom assistant’s pay, even when topped up with a police pension, is never going to make anyone rich. But the hills outside my window are real. And one day when you come out, I’d like to climb them with you.