After the slightly chaotic end to Dido’s evidence and the subsequent adjournment for the day, a packed court resumed the following Monday, with the Judge announcing,

“I have given due thought to what happened on Friday, and having conferred with both the defence legal team and the CPS, we will resume today. The testimony of Ms Pleasance will not be struck from the record, objection overruled.”

“Mr Fox, please call your next witness,” said the Judge.

Fox rose and looked around the court.

“After due consideration and discussions with my legal team, we will not be calling any witnesses, My Lord.”

The sudden end to that stage of the trial caught everyone by surprise, including the Judge.

The Judge addressed the barristers.

“Mr Fox, are you ready to make your closing argument?”

“I am, My Lord.”

The judge turned to Cyril Kennedy, the lead barrister for Marcus Fox.

“Mr Kennedy, as representative of Mr Marcus Fox, has there been any change regarding the communication that you sent me last night?”

“No, My Lord. Mr Marcus Fox stands by that decision.

“Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, I have to inform you that Mr Marcus Fox has now entered a plea of guilty to all charges. Consequently, none of the charges levied against him will be part of your discussions.”

Fox senior glared at his son. From his body language, Fox had been planning on throwing his son under every London bus in existence. Now, he could not because Marcus’s counsel could not reply. The judge would come down heavily on him should he try to pin everything on him.
Fox took one set of notes on the desk in front of him, and with a shake of his head, he folded them in half and put them at the bottom of the pile of legal documents in front of him.

“Because of that, there will be no closing statement on his behalf,” said the Judge.

Mr Fox began his closing using a second set of notes. It was almost as if the change of heart by his son had taken the wind out of his sails for the first ten minutes of his statement. Then he got into his stride, and for twenty-six long minutes, he tried to demolish the evidence given by Dido. He never mentioned anyone else who had testified. He didn’t even try to dismiss the evidence from his home. The only person in his sights for the attack was Dido. It was personal, very personal.

John was puzzled by this at first. As Fox droned on, John began to realise that he was trying to deflect the jury from the very graphic depiction of the cellar given by Dido and the forensic evidence. He never mentioned the bomb. It was as if it had never existed. The same went for the two bodies that were found in the grounds and the two young people who were rescued from the cellar. The only person in his sights was Dido. He had been bested by a student, and the master wanted revenge.

To John, his whole closing argument was total and utter bollocks and an exercise in deflection that failed spectacularly. Several members of the jury seemed to switch off after a few minutes of his ranting against Dido. It was as if they had already decided on a guilty or not guilty verdict.

Because he spent most of the speech attacking Dido, he began to ramble and repeat himself. This was not the Fox of old. To John, it was like the lead actor forgetting his lines at the critical part of Act 3. After accusing her of making the whole thing up for the third time, it was clear to John that at least half the jurors had now tuned out of the whole thing.

Fox ended with a classic tirade of ‘it wasn’t him; he didn’t do it, and besides, he wasn’t there, despite being arrested while in his bed at the house where two mutilated children were being kept in cells. Plus, his fingerprints were all over the cellar. It was all his son’s fault. Now that Marcus had pleaded guilty, Fox had no hesitation to, as the Americans say, ‘throw his son under the bus’ where he could get away with it. He denied all knowledge of the Operation Chesil documents. As he was not facing any charges relating to them, to John, it was Fox raising the white flag.

Dido’s photographic evidence had made disproving that very easy, but Fox only had one target: Dido herself. It was almost as if he was trying to put his pupil in her place because he could not face the humiliation of being outsmarted by a student whom he took great pleasure in dismissing with his marking of her papers. His message was that I am ‘king’ and shall be obeyed. Dido had made it more of an example of ‘the emperor’s new clothes.’

John Proudfoot, from his seat in the public gallery, could tell that the jury was not impressed one little bit. Several of them avoided looking at him during the entirety of his address. He’d seen that behaviour before. It meant that they had already made up their minds. Others got bored and tuned out. He had lost the jury, and from the glares that he gave each one at the very end of his statement, he knew it. To John, he had aged about fifteen years in the last hour. Fox’s shoulders sagged, and it was as if he was visibly shrinking in stature right before his eyes.

The words ‘a beaten man’ came into his mind.

After the adjournment for lunch, it was the turn of the Prosecution. To John, their closing was as eloquent as any of the great speeches in a Shakespeare play. It was factual and specific. Each key charge against Fox the elder was covered and supported by the evidence that had been presented to the court. While Dido’s role in the detection and arrest of both Foxes was not mentioned, the charges that related to her and Chrissy were covered in detail.

John watched the jury. They were very attentive, with over half of them taking notes at key points in the closing. Fox kept his head down and didn’t look at anyone for the entire time the prosecution was speaking.

The final coup-de-grace came when the Barrister said,

“Mr Fox has appeared many times in this court. A few days ago, you heard testimony from Ms Pleasance. Despite her being a victim of both defendants, she stood up to the many attempts to discredit her with a stoicism where many other witnesses with a similar experience at the hands of the accused would have caved in. She has learned the tricks of Fox while being a student of his. Being able to face down the man who had abused her for many years in the way she did is almost unique in British legal history. I want to commend Ms Pleasance for her bravery and courage to face up to a very formidable opponent such as Mr Fox.”

He briefly looked at his notes before continuing.
“Ms Pleasance quoted the 2015 act perfectly, as I am sure My Lord Stephens will confirm in his summing up. In that respect, Mr Fox is clearly in breach of section 2 of that act when it comes to Child 1 and Child 2. I implore you to find him guilty of all charges despite his repeated denials; the vast amounts of evidence presented to this court proves otherwise.”

After a glance at the Judge and then his notes, he carried on.

“The repeated sexual abuse from both defendants and others, as Ms Pleasance testified in very graphic detail, was backed up by physical evidence about Mr Fox that only someone who had been very close to the body of Mr Fox could reasonably know. The fact that he could not disprove her claims is, in my eyes, more than enough for you to return a guilty verdict on those charges.”

He looked at the jury once more.
“Next, I want to draw your attention to the subject of the explosive device that was in the cellar of the accused’s place of residence. To have an explosive device in a residential building is bad enough, but to brazenly attempt to trigger an explosion while there were Scenes of Crime Officers in the building is why Mr Fox was charged with numerous counts of attempted murder. His then-solicitor testified that Mr Fox tried to send the message that would have triggered the explosion from inside a police station. The law is clear that lawyer-client confidentiality does not apply when a crime is being committed. The fingerprints of Mr Fox were all over the explosive device, and the phone number he tried to send the message to was identical to the number of the device that was attached to the bomb. That, ladies and gentlemen of the jury, should be more than enough evidence to return a guilty verdict on the attempted murder charges. For such an important set of charges, I find it very strange that Mr Fox did not mention them in his closing, but that is his right.”

After another glance at his notes, he carried on.

“Then we come to the sad case of the two deceased children that were found in shallow graves on the property where Mr Fox and his son resided, and again, something that Mr Fox ignored in his closing statement. The coroner’s evidence was clear. They had been mutilated in the same way as Ms Pleasance and the other victims. Their deaths were ruled suspicious because of their status as victims of kidnapping. Mr Fox was unable to explain away their deaths or the presence of their bodies on their property, apart from saying that it was all his son’s fault. I am sure, ladies and gentlemen of the jury, that given the roles that the father and son played in the house, I would find it hard to believe that Mr Fox knew nothing about their presence in his cellar, nothing about the abuse that was documented by the coroner’s report and that he knew nothing about the HIV positive status when we presented evidence of two HIV tests paid for from his personal bank account around the estimated time of their deaths.”

“Finally, the very graphic and detailed evidence of the abuse that those imprisoned by Mr Fox over at least fifteen years suffered on an almost daily basis is hard to swallow. We heard directly from just one of his victims, but the video statements from three more were shown to you. The youngest of them is just nine years old and necessarily short because of the trauma that they are still experiencing on an almost daily basis. Please think about that when you are deliberating. All of these victims will have to live with their experiences for the rest of their lives. I implore you to find him guilty of all charges. Doing so would make his first appearance in the Dock, his last appearance in this hallowed court of justice, because justice matters for the poor children that he has repeatedly abused over so many years.”

“The prosecution rests, My Lord.”

The judge let the court settle before starting the next phase of the trial.

“Ladies and Gentlemen of the jury, I am going to adjourn the court until 09:30 tomorrow, when I will begin summing up the case. By that time, you will each have copies of the transcripts of the testimony that you have heard, as well as photographic copies of all the evidence presented to the court. I estimate that my summing up will take some 3-4 hours, after which I will send you out so that you can begin your deliberations.”

“This court is adjourned.”

[The next day]

The Judge went through the case, reminding the jury about the key points of testimony and evidence. There were some points where the various expert testimonies conflicted with each other. He explained his understanding of that conflict but emphasised that none of those conflicts would affect the overall picture of the case that had been presented to the jury.

He then spent a lot of time talking about Dido’s video statements and testimony. He explained in detail, including the legal precedents, why he ruled that her evidence was admissible. He wrapped that all up with the Brer Rabbit picture and said,
“Mr Fox is clearly visible in that image, as is Ms Pleasance. I will leave it to you to judge what crime, if any, he is committing at the time it was taken, but the fact that Ms Pleasance was legally a child at the time should be enough for you to come to a verdict.”

“Ms Pleasance, in her evidence, and Mr Prescott in his closing, are correct in that the 2015 act around child trafficking covers what was done to Child 1 and Child 2. It does not cover what happened to Ms Pleasance and Child 3, but the charges laid by the Crown Prosecution Service against Mr Fox under this act do not cover Ms Pleasance and Child 3.”

The Judge went on to cover all the alleged offences and the many laws under which Mr Fox was charged as a matter of law and guidance for the jury. With each passing charge, it was clear to everyone in the court that Fox was getting increasingly irritated. To have all the offences listed and then backed up with real hard evidence is a sobering thought for anyone but Fox, who had been on the other side for so many years.

At the end of the summing up, the judge moved on to the relevant points of law. He went through all the charges and the laws that were alleged to have been broken in the case. He directed the jury to return a guilty verdict on the charge of imprisoning a child when it came to Dido. That was because the background in the Brer Rabbit picture clearly showed the cell bars, which also agreed with the images taken by the SOCO team at the time of the arrest. He explained that because of the admittance of Mr Marcus Fox, he not only took the photo and posted it on the internet, but had made a statement about where it was taken, which proved the CPS case in that one charge.

When that was done, he said,
“Ladies and Gentlemen of the Jury. You have heard the evidence and some truly heart-wrenching testimony in this court. Now it is up to you to decide if Mr Jonathan Fox did commit the crimes upon which he is charged beyond a reasonable doubt.”

“When you are released to consider your verdict, your first job is to choose a foreperson who will manage the deliberations and voting on the verdicts. Any physical evidence that has been admitted and presented to the court will be available to you on request.”

In the public gallery, John Proudfoot watched on with pride. The years of work he’d done with Dido were coming close to a conclusion. He saw the members of the press corps scribbling as fast as they could. Fox sat with an unblinking expression on his face. John shook his head. In his opinion, Fox knew that his goose was cooked.

The Judge sent the jury off to consider their verdict a few minutes later. John waited for the court to clear before leaving his seat. The whole trial had been exhausting for him, not only because of his investment in Dido and Chrissy but also because he’d forgotten just how much energy just being in court took. Most of his appearances in courts, such as the historic No. 1 Court at the Old Bailey, had been just as a witness. In those days, it was a case of going in, giving evidence and going back to his desk to pick up the next file from the never-decreasing pile of open cases that came his way. That was a long time ago. For a moment, he missed the way his life had been organised by those above him until he became one of the organisers, and despite apparently doing a good job, he hated every minute of it. This case had given him a new lease of life, and now the end of the main case was in sight.

The prospect of this case coming to an end was only part of the issues facing his girls. Dido had her studies to complete, but it was Chrissy who worried him. He knew things that he wanted to share with her, but could not. It would be up to him to placate her in the immediate future.

Chrissy had been putting a brave face on things while Fox was on trial, but now that the end was in sight, she’d been brooding over the lack of progress in her other case. Even his inquiries to the team about progress had, in recent weeks, been rebuffed. As he exited the famous building, the forecast rain was just starting, only this wasn’t a light shower but more like a downpour, and his raincoat was at home…

John was about to go in search of a taxi to take him to Liverpool Street Station when a woman came up to him. He’d seen her in the public gallery for the closing.

“There you are, John!” said the woman.
“I hope you were not going to leave me here to get wet?”

The woman’s words brought him out of his melancholy. For half a second, he tried to place her. Then he clocked who she was.

“Dido? What are you doing here?” he said in a barely audible voice.

“Do you like my new look?” she replied, ignoring his question.

Her new look was to wear a short black wig and a grey knee-length business suit. This was topped off by a pair of black-rimmed glasses. Her effervescent smile shone through her disguise and always cheered him up. It was that smile that had made him offer a dirty and somewhat smelly rookie car thief a place to get clean and have a decent meal all those years ago. Dido had become a wonderful young woman who had given Fox a whipping in court. The press had praised her for taking the fight to the legendary barrister Jonathan Fox. Her time of being anonymous was over… or was it? Dido didn’t look like Dido.

“Different.”

Dido stuck her tongue out at John. He grinned back at the daughter he never had.

“I think that we should go to Lunch,” said John, for the lack of anything better to say.

“Oh, Daddy! Where shall we go?” asked a grinning Dido.

“I know of a very nice place in Leadenhall Market.”

“Perfect,” replied Dido as she put her arm in his and almost frog-marched him away from the court.

Out of the corner of his eye, John saw three TV crews and their reporters setting up for a live broadcast when the verdict came in. He shook his head. The sheer volume of charges for the jury to consider made delivering a verdict that day, in his opinion, highly unlikely. If they stood there for very long, they were going to get pretty wet.

After a decent lunch in Leadenhall Market, the pair walked the short distance to a coffee house close to the iconic Lloyds of London building before heading to Epping. It had been a strange end to the trial and one that John Proudfoot would never forget, especially with such a brave and intelligent young woman like Dido in his life.

That evening, after dinner at John’s home, he got Dido, Chrissy and Trish together.

“I wanted to talk to you about loose ends. There are two big ones. Operation Chesil and your parents, Dido,” said John.
“And the verdict, of course.

Dido didn’t say anything but played with her coffee.

“It seems that the Operation Chesil team have hit a dead end. There have been no more attacks since before Fox was arrested. It remains to be seen if the information provided by Marcus Fox can eventually bring a breakthrough. While you have been busy with Fox, I engaged a couple of Private Investigators in the USA to find your parents, Dido.”

Dido’s ears pricked up.
John produced a file and put it on the table.

“The good news is that the second team of PIs have found them. The bad news is that your father, Dido, is currently serving a jail sentence for running a Ponzi scheme in, of all places, Las Vegas. He comes up for parole very shortly. Your mother is a day shift manager at a Pizza joint in South Vegas. The report indicates that they don’t seem to have any plans to skip the state when your father is released. If he gets parole, he will be subject to a period of probation. If he skips the state, then they could send the bounty hunters after him. That might not be good, as it could result in a Federal Charge that could result in him losing his US Citizenship.”

“But that would be good for us, wouldn’t it?” asked Trish.

John smiled.
“It would. He would likely be extradited here to face the music. Dido’s statements in Fox’s trial could form the basis of a new investigation into his crimes before they fled to the USA.”

Dido didn’t seem that impressed. She looked exhausted.

John took her hand.

“I’ve said it before, but you both need a break to recharge your batteries, so don’t even think of looking at this report for two or three weeks.”
The tone of his voice was enough to make Dido nod her head.

“I have some bad news,” said Trish.
“I need to go back north tomorrow. Now that the trial is winding down, my boss wants me back looking at cold cases until it is time to start back at Uni. I know it sucks, but they have been very good at giving me time off to assist Dido during the trial. They don’t seem to have a good grasp of how big a case this is down here. I’ll be back at least a week before term starts because I have holiday time to use up before the end of the year.”

That news put a damper on the evening.

“We have to hope that Marcus isn’t playing games with the CPS. My sources indicate that he knows more than we think about the Operation Chesil gang,” said John, changing the subject.

“How does that impact Chrissy’s case?” asked Trish.

“I don’t know, but I know that the CPS is going to talk to Fox Junior now that he has pled guilty. He knows more than he’s letting on about the gang who raped Chrissy.”

“I’m confused,” said Dido.

“Don’t be confused. With everything that has been going on and with all that evidence we found at Fox’s home, it is easy to connect the two, but between you and me, I think that the CPS is right about Fox Junior knowing more than he is letting on.”

“Chrissy, please don’t think that any of us has forgotten your case. We haven’t. When the dust has settled from the court case, I know that Dido and I will be back on your case.”

John smiled at Dido and then looked Chrissy in the eye.

“Our dear friend Dido has… shall we say contacts with people who can find out stuff that the Police can’t. We will develop a plan to work on your case in parallel with the NCA. I, for one, will not rest until justice is served for BOTH my girls.”

Chrissy, who had been pretty quiet all evening, managed a smile.
“Thanks, John. It has been hard recently, with Dido being at the centre of things. From the reports I have read on Social-Media, she kicked Fox in the ass.”

Then she turned to Dido.
“Dido, go and get things straight with your parents. I’m not going anywhere unless John throws me out for ruining dinner yet again.”

“Chrissy is not the first bad cook to have graced my kitchen. My late wife was terrible in the kitchen until I paid for a chef to come and give her proper lessons. I won’t kick you out, but I do reserve the right to get you some proper training. Ok?”

Chrissy smiled. She was ok for the time being.

John looked at his watch.
“Trish, if you want to get your things, I’ll run you to the station. I need to go shopping.”

“If you are going out, then I’ll accept.”

“Any requests for tomorrow night?” asked John.

Dido smiled.
“As long as you cook your special pasta dish… unless you want to give me the secret to the sauce?”

John smiled.
“No chance until you marry Trish. That will be my wedding present to you.”

The subject of Dido marrying Trish had come up several times. To everyone, it was clear that they were in love with each other, but something was stopping them from taking it further.

Trish smiled at John.
“We have agreed to put it off until we have graduated.”

“It is hard enough as it is not to hold hands at university. We don’t want to make even more enemies. Next year is going to be hard, especially if Fox gets found not guilty. He still has a lot of friends in the University who owe him for their positions,” said Dido.

“He’s going down for at least five years. Have you forgotten the gun crimes? He never mentioned it in his closing. That is a five-year mandatory minimum sentence.”

“Even so, he could appeal and get out on bail,” said a solemn Dido.
“My life at uni will be hell. He’ll make sure that it is.”

“He won’t be going back to teaching or anything related to the law even if he gets acquitted,” said John.
“His chambers have already kicked him out for not paying his dues, and there is an official case against him with the Law Society.”

Dido didn’t answer but smiled back at John. She hated how he could read her innermost secrets, but deep down, she knew that he had nothing but her best interests at heart.

Dido and Trish disappeared to say their goodbyes. John knew that it was going to be quite emotional. If they had been close before the trial, they were acting more like a married couple now. He was happy for Dido. As a substitute parent, there was only so much that he could do for her. His job with Dido was almost at an end. Chrissy was very much a work in progress.

That evening, after Trish had left to go home and while John made dinner, he explained what he was thinking about when it came to her parents.

“He had to get the getaway car from somewhere. I made some discreet enquiries as it is a very cold case, and an old buddy of mine let me have a look at the case files for his last two robberies. In each case, the car was stolen from the Birmingham area and given number plates that indicate a Kent registration. For a low-level crook like your father, that is way beyond the norm. I guess that he’d steal a car from somewhere like Basildon, do the job and dispose of the car afterwards on somewhere like Canvey Island or Shoeburyness marshes. Getting a car from a hundred miles from London is out of the norm for him. Therefore…”

He paused to let Dido fill in the missing blanks, and she duly complied.
“The people who put him up to the job will have supplied the car and… and if the guesses about this criminal rent-a-vehicle organisation are true, then he might have a link as to who they are?”

John grinned as he stirred the pasta sauce.
“Exactly. Ok, so his info might be long past its use-by date, but any little help could allow us to crack the case. We know that there is a link to the gang who raped and destroyed Chrissy’s life to this shadowy organisation, thanks to the DNA that was found in the back.”

“So… I go to Nevada, visit my dad and say, I can say a good word to the parole board or… give me the details on the gang who supplied you the wheels for your last two jobs.”

“Why not? What is there to lose? If he says no way, then you can tell the parole board all about what he did to you. Then, I can have a word with my friend in the cold case unit and who knows… HMG[1] might even decide to issue an extradition warrant for him?”

Dido nodded. Her attention was 100% on the delightful smell that was coming from the pot of sauce.

Over their pasta dinner, accompanied by a nice Barolo wine, the pair discussed their next steps.

“Why don’t you take Trish with you? Who knows you…”

Dido glared at John. She knew that he was teasing her, but the prospect of spending up to a week with Trish, well away from London and everything to do with Fox, was very tempting.

[1] HMG: Her/His Majesty's Government.