Day Minus Six Thousand Nine Hundred and Ninety-Eight, 23:00

Day Minus Six Thousand Nine Hundred and Ninety-Eight, 23:00

It’s late. Jen is in the bath. She can’t wait to go to sleep and wake up someplace else, tomorrow.

A hot pool of confusion gathers in her stomach.

Undercover. Undercover. The word, ugly and huge, thrums underneath Jen’s breastbone like a heartbeat. So this is why. No PAYE job. No social media. No parties.

Kelly has been living under an assumed identity for twenty years.

But why did he never tell her?

She thinks she has pieced it together into the right order. She wishes she could ask Andy, but he won’t even have finished his degree yet. Not even he can help her now.

She stares at the frosted window, thinking it through.

Kelly went undercover. His evidence sent Joseph to prison. Twenty years later, Joseph is released, comes looking – at the law firm – for Kelly, trying to start up his crime ring once again, with all the old players in it. If Kelly refused to obey Joseph, Joseph would suspect he was the undercover officer. If he complied, he became a criminal, proper. Kelly couldn’t win. And, since Joseph served twenty years for the crimes he committed with many of his foot soldiers, he had a hold over all of them if they didn’t comply: he could hand them in. Only, over Kelly, he had an even greater hold, so great he didn’t even know it: if he reported Kelly for his past crimes, then the police would come looking and find out Kelly was still living under his assumed identity. Illegally. Or, worse, that he was committing offences now, without the authority of the police.

Hence the package passed, containing the stolen car key. Kelly was forced to comply. Todd was there when they met again, as was Clio, and they fell in love. Kelly told Todd not to tell Jen about him knowing Joseph, and he also, later, told Todd to finish it with Clio. He must have confessed all that night in the garden, told Todd who he really was. The most fucked-up thing Todd had ever had happen to him, he had said. He must have shown him his old badge, the poster. Jen can just imagine it now, the conversation taking place in Todd’s room. Todd hiding the badge, phone and poster, from her.

Kelly began working for Joseph again, but at the moment he thought Joseph might know he was the policeman who put him in prison, he desperately contacted Nicola for help. Who is not, as it turned out, a criminal, but somebody who had been undercover back then. Police. He must have felt between a rock and a hard place. In fear for his life, coming clean to Nicola must have been the least bad option.

In return for her silence, and because of the risk of Joseph finding them, she asked Kelly for a favour. This must have been for Kelly to pass information to the police about Joseph’s ongoing crimes. Maybe she arranged protection for Kelly and that’s why Jen saw the police cars circulating. Maybe that’s why they arrived so soon on that night, way before the ambulance. They were waiting to intervene, but just too late, too late.

Nicola must have been harmed by Joseph two nights before Todd commits his crime. The section 18 wounding with intent Jen overheard in the police station. Joseph must have worked her out. Now out of prison, he would have been watching every single contact of his for signs they were not who they said. It would have been easier to work her out as police, given she never left. That’s why Nicola looked so different in Wagamama’s: she wasn’t in her undercover role.

And figuring out Nicola will have led Joseph to Kelly.

So Joseph finds out, and comes for Kelly in the middle of the night at the end of October. And wasn’t he armed? Didn’t he reach into his pocket for a weapon?

The police appeared almost immediately after the murder. They probably already knew something was brewing.

And then they betrayed Kelly: they arrested Todd. Even though Kelly had asked Nicola for help. No wonder he was furious at the station.

And what of Todd? Well, it seems so simple now that Jen knows. He wanted to protect his father. So, on hearing about Nicola, he bought a knife. On his way home, he recognized Joseph, saw he was armed, and panicked. Then he did the only thing he could: protected his dad, at all costs.