The three sat up strategising and by morning they had a plan. It was the right thing to do, the honest and proper course of action, and it would ruin the policing careers of each of them. The NSW Police force of today has systems that reduce opportunities for corruption and at least in theory prevent the prevailing culture of the 1970s and 1980s from flourishing again. Mandatory reporting requirements and an Internal Witness Support Unit are in place to protect whistleblowers. NSW Police Sergeant Roger Rogerson, who offered a drug squad detective a bribe, in 1985. Credit:Jackie Haynes But the tentacles of the hydra that gripped the force 30 years ago still hold a generation of officers by the neck. Cook, Deerfield and Hall would become, respectively, a salesman, a security guard to the stars and the first female Sheriff of NSW, yet none of them would shake the events of 1988. Deerfield picked up a call just the other day to be called a "f------ c---". Click.

In many ways, that restless night has never ended. Cook, Deerfield and Hall had travelled to the NSW-Victorian border with the NSW Gaming Squad that winter to conduct a joint operation with local police at nearby Mulwala. Deerfield was an outsider in the force who had earned a bad reputation for honesty by refusing to take his cut of slings and he held many of his colleagues in low regard. John Deerfield outside the ICAC in 1994. Credit:Steven Siewert But he had utmost respect for Cook, a well-liked and decorated officer running the gaming squad’s surveillance unit. "He was the epitome of a good cop," Deerfield says. "He taught me everything."

Hall was a ring-in from intelligence, filling in for a surveillance team member on a course. She had not met Cook or Deerfield before that week. The operation had been successful, with the team arresting notorious SP bookmaker Alan Tripp on June 13 and also confiscating his ledger. Now the second worst thing that could happen to a bookie was losing the ledger that contained the names of his clients and the sums owed or owing, and the very worst thing was losing it to the cops. Bookies were known to disintegrate their ledgers in water during police raids in order to protect their secrets. Tripp's ledger, rumoured to contain then Prime Minister Bob Hawke and several high-profile underworld figures, was more valuable than most. As gaming squad officers and local police celebrated Tripp's arrest in a room of the motel that night, Mulwala police officer Frank Deak and surveillance officer Eugene Zubrecky lay on a double bed and plotted to sell a copy of the ledger back to Tripp. Then they approached Cook.

Two days after Cook's late night strategy session, officers from the Internal Police Security Unit swooped on Deak and Zubrecky at the Goulburn McDonald's carpark and discovered $10,000 in the boot of a car. Deerfield was conducting surveillance from over the road. Cook was wearing a wire. Zubrecky and Deak were charged with inducing a public officer to act corruptly and imprisoned for six and nine months respectively. But Cook already sensed that his life would never be the same. "I cried all the way from Albury to Goulburn, knowing that I was going to stuff my family up and cause a lot of problems, but what was the alternative?" he says, and even now his voice shakes at the memory. "Do you let the bastards get away with it? If you turn a blind eye then you're as bad as every other rotten copper in the world."

Back in the gaming squad’s Sydney office the following Monday, it was he and Deerfield who were made to pay. Deborah Locke, the surveillance officer whose position had been filled in by Hall, recalls a palpable hostility when she resumed her duties that week. "It had all blown up," she says. "I supported Kim, and there was just Kim, me and John Deerfield and it was just so frightening. "You had guys saying, 'How could you lock up another cop?' and Kim was going, 'What choice did I have?' "They were just absolutely abusing us. They were shaking with anger."

Former police officer Deborah Locke, with disgraced cop Glen McNamara, outside Kings Cross police station in 2010. Credit:Steven Siewert Cartoons of Deerfield and Cook appeared in the office. Cook was depicted as a snake and Deerfield was armed with a knife. One picture included a noose - an "Aboriginal calming device". Cook was assaulted by colleagues at a hotel and his house was broken into. Nuisance calls arrived at all hours. An officer was heard to say he should be loaded up with heroin or shot. There was talk of a contract on his life. Hall was equally isolated over in intelligence, where one of her colleagues was Zubrecky's wife. She would tell the Independent Commission Against Corruption in 1993 that colleagues streamed into the office to comfort Mrs Zubrecky, while she was pointedly ignored. Nobody gave her work and nobody wanted to work with her.

John Deerfield in 1994 with Kimbal Cook, who he described as the epitome of a good cop. Credit:Dallas Kilponen Eventually Hall's position became so untenable she was forced to join Cook and Deerfield in the surveillance unit, where they felt as though they were under siege. Unbelievably, Deak and Zubrecky continued to come into the office while they were awaiting trial and Gaming Squad chief George Taylforth referred to them as "my boys". "It’s not as if it was drugs or anything, it’s only a ledger," he said. In fact, Hall told the ICAC, Deak and Zubrecky were made "extremely welcome" in the office.

"I think it was an overplay of showing a sign of allegiance to them so that it made it more uncomfortable for Detective Sergeant Cook and Senior Constable Deerfield and myself," she said. Kimbal Cook and his wife Diana outside the ICAC building in February 1994. Credit:Steven Siewert After the second break-in to his home, Cook's wife insisted that they move house. Cook applied for $25,000 to cover the moving costs, though he later alleged that the head of the professional integrity branch told him to remove all references to police intimidation from his application form. The alleged directive, which was hinted to have emanated from the police commissioner, became the subject of contention at ICAC and misconduct charges were recommended against integrity boss Superintendent Bob Myatt. Myatt was later cleared by the NSW Police Tribunal.

The ICAC inquiry, which also heard evidence of a close association between Roger Rogerson and notorious crime figure Arthur "Neddy" Smith, became the precursor to the Wood royal commission and led to major reforms of the police service. Arthur 'Neddy' Smith with Roger Rogerson. But by the time the Police Integrity Commission was established in 1996, Cook, Deerfield and Hall had left the force. Cook, who had received four Commissioner's commendations and the Queens Medal for bravery, retired from the police to work in a caryard in 1994, utterly disenchanted. He credits his sister and wife with preventing his suicide. "I felt let down by police, ICAC and the Wood royal commission," he says.

"I can honestly say that out of all the people who ought to have done the right thing by me, there was not one that did." He worked as a car salesman for Holden, then Canon where he moved into senior management and finally in an IT company, where he earned more than he ever would as a policeman. Now retired, he reflects on his career as "bittersweet". "It was hard to avoid the corruption and that sounds like a funny thing to say but I can go through my [policing] career and it was a zigzag from corruption." He left the force without a send-off, and nor did he want one, but he has recently been contemplating whether now might be the right time to write to the police commissioner and see if he can get a plaque to hand down to his children. Hall transitioned into police prosecuting and moved through various parts of the justice department before being appointed NSW Sheriff in 2013.

John Deerfield in 1994. Credit:Dallas Kilponen She was recently attacked by radio host Ray Hadley over a union matter, during the course of which tirade he said: "I don't know Tracey Hall's background but the public servant who made this decision has never faced an angry man or woman, obviously..." Like Cook and Deerfield, she has never sought publicity. Contacted by the Herald and presented with the suggestion that she had overcome her experience of 30 years ago, she was silent. "I’m getting chest pains just talking to you," she eventually replied. She declined to be interviewed. Deerfield works these days in security at a museum in Darlinghurst. After he was medically discharged from the police, he became a driver for Rene Rivkin, replacing Gordon Wood who was then under suspicion for murdering his girlfriend Carolyn Byrne.

He has since been employed as a bodyguard for Bill Gates, Neil Armfield, Rupert Murdoch and Nicole Kidman, as well as doing a stint for the paparazzi. His job is to survey threats to his clients, his life is to field threats to himself. They don't come as frequently now, but they have never stopped. It's not fear, so much as the injustice that gets to him, that Deak and Zubrecky were supported while he, Cook and Hall were ostracised. John Deerfield and Rene Rivkin on Rivkin's boat 'Dajoshadita' in 1997. Credit:Ken James Pictures "You find someone who's doing the right thing and you protect the ones that aren't," he says.