At the meeting some asked why they had not been given the chance either in the Supreme or High courts to defend their actions. A senior officer told them the court action was only ever about trying to protect 3838 from gangsters, who traditionally have zero tolerance for betrayal. The royal commission, he said, would be the chance to explain why they used the lawyer’s inside knowledge in some of the state’s most sensitive investigations. Someone had blundered: The Charge of the Light Brigade as depicted by Richard Caton Woodville, 1894. The meeting was told that all dealings with her were taped, the notes were intact and the Informer Management Unit’s so-called ‘‘sterile corridor’’, where a human source officer was the bridge between informer and investigators, was maintained. Whether their optimistic appraisal is based on fact or simply the rev-up before the equivalent of the Charge of the Light Brigade, will be a matter for the royal commission.

At the heart of the controversy is a clear philosophical divide between two arms of the criminal justice system - lawyers and police. Lawyers claim the barrister’s obligation to maintain confidentiality meant police should never have used her information. Police argue they broke no laws in using her as a source and had an obligation to use any material they could to stop the underworld war. What we now know is she was not alone. Police say there were up to seven other informers who have provided information, which may breach professional privilege. While they are not all lawyers, Melbourne solicitors and barristers who work in the criminal law have been in a flat spin since the news broke. Loading Some are concerned they could have been registered without their knowledge years earlier, even though they had not provided confidential information. Others fear that violent clients who were found guilty might jump to the conclusion that their lawyers conspired with the police against them. They may add two and two and reach for a .38 pistol. The main issue will be whether some of 3838's clients did not get fair trials, or were forced to plead guilty on the back of tainted evidence.

While the nature, value and legitimacy of her information will be examined by the royal commission (there are already murmurings that the July deadline for an interim report may be too tight), what is established is that she was spectacularly ill-suited to being a double agent. For years she refused police security, preferring to hide in plain sight, and while the underworld knows her name she had managed to live a relatively normal life in open society. This has now changed. Former colleagues shun her, she is blackballed by some relatives and parents in her social circle are turning away, not wanting their children in potential danger. Her way of life is collapsing. Drug dealer and killer Carl Williams is arrested, November 2003. He came to believe that 3838 was a snitch. Credit:Angela Wylie Since losing the High Court case in December, police have been trying to perform a massive magic trick. They are attempting to make 3838 disappear, at least from the public records. Many of the online stories that can track her have gone, property records with her name have been sealed and photos buried. Legally, they are trying to put a very identifiable genie in a very anonymous bottle. Like a Soviet leader who is out of fashion, it is as if she didn’t exist.

So this is what we can say without increasing the risks or breaching suppression orders (gulp). Her family is the template of a successful migrant dynasty, succeeding in the restaurant and legal trades. A student at an elite girl’s school, her father died when she was a teenager. She was determined to experience all sides of Melbourne University life, dabbling in student newspapers and embracing left-wing politics while passing her law degree. Even then she either gravitated to bad company or began to make a series of poor choices when it came to her social network. Around the halfway point of her degree, she struck what could have been a career-ending hurdle. In 1993 police raided her Rathdowne Street home and seized methamphetamines valued at $82,000, half a kilo of cannabis and prohibited weapons. While two men faced more serious charges, she pleaded guilty to possession and use. No conviction was recorded, allowing her to embark on her legal career. In 1995, while still a student, she was registered as a police informer. But the system was so flawed that this fact was only discovered accidentally in late January, when a file was found in a cardboard box in police storage.

3838 registered as a police informer not once but several times. Credit:Illustration: Jo Gay Now police have told the royal commission she was also used as an informer in 1999 and five other witnesses who may have breached professional privilege have been identified. By 1998, as a very young barrister, she had started to construct a brand. In a business dominated by middle-aged men in suits she was a flashy dresser, with a reputation as a hard worker and player. In a profession that frowns on self-promotion, she was happy to drip-feed gossip columnists with naughty girl stories dubbing her a ‘‘hotshot legal eagle”. Soon after she became a barrister, Melbourne’s underworld went to war on October 13, 1999, when drug dealer Carl Williams was shot and wounded by gangsters Jason and Mark Moran. It was around this time that she registered as an informer for a second time - four years before the Purana Gangland Taskforce was established. Just months after the taskforce began, she started to secretly meet one of its key investigators. She says she told him of how Williams was trying to control witnesses and of ‘‘solicitors perverting the course of justice and conspiring with criminals to try to ensure a number of gangland murders would remain unsolved’’.

Tony Mokbel: Ambushed in prison. Always wanted to get out of jail, but not in an air ambulance. Credit:AAP Around that time she considered leaving the Criminal Bar to open a juice bar in Asia. Instead she went back to her old ways, working and socialising with heavy crooks while secretly talking to police. In September 2005 she again became a registered informer: ‘‘My breaking point came when I was threatened by Tony Mokbel to ensure that a first-time offender, who was operating pill presses and manufacturing tens of thousands of MDMA pills for him, kept his mouth shut and pleaded guilty.’’ Certainly according to another police source, codenamed Witness B, there was such an event, but it was more than two years earlier. In April 2003, after a Mokbel drug lab was raided in Rye, Witness B and Tony's brother Horty Mokbel went to a side street near the St Kilda Road Drug Squad office to wait for the arrested men to be released: ‘‘[3838] was there as well, she was coming in and out of the station and she would come and speak to Horty and me around the corner.’’ Witness B claimed Drug Squad detective Paul Dale rang 3838 with the tip that one of the arrested men was considering talking.

A Mokbel drug lab goes up in smoke. Credit:Pat Scala ‘‘She said that Dale must have realised that [the suspect] was about to start talking about the Rye drug job and who was involved and he wanted to give up everyone. [She] said that Dale then rang her to get her to come and talk to [the suspect]. [She] said that on that day she convinced [the suspect] not to roll [talk].’’ One of the challenges for the royal commission is to establish when 3838 was acting as a barrister, with an obligation to provide confidential and sound legal advice, and when she was acting as a co-conspirator, trying to shut down police investigations and stop witnesses talking. Certainly the interested parties, including police and senior prosecutors, were surprised when Premier Daniel Andrews announced a royal commission. In the otherwise glacial world of legal process, it was supposed to be short and sharp, reporting by the end of the year. That aim has already been blown apart by the news that police had up to seven other informers who may have broken privilege. If the inquiry drills back to a cocaine bust nearly 20 years ago, it has the capacity to blow the lid on what was then widespread drug use and improper associations. And if 3838’s initial claim that she provided information on ‘‘solicitors perverting the course of justice and conspiring with criminals’’ is true, the commission could expose the underbelly of both the law enforcement and judicial systems.

Perhaps the royal commission will hear how a well-respected lawyer, tipped off by one gangster, spread the word through the underworld that 3838 was wearing a police wire. Sound legal advice? Or conspiracy to pervert the course of justice? You be the judge.