The looming start of Dido’s and Trish’s final year as undergraduate students didn’t stop Dido from planning how to follow up on the information her dark web contacts had sent her. Almost all of it related to Fox’s assets.

Over the years that he had been defending crooks and running his little sideline like in his cellar, he’d done a lot of work hiding the income from those enterprises. Some of the first overseas investments dated back to when he was a Junior Barrister. Reports sent to Dido on how they were structured indicated he had learned from an expert how to hide undeclared income. Dido looked at the cases from early in his career. It didn’t take her long to discover that his third case as a defence barrister involved a crooked banker who had extensive assets hidden abroad. Six weeks after that case ended, Fox had opened his first offshore account in Panama.

They all received a surprise when the coroner ruled that the gold that was found on Fox’s property was now the property of the state. No one had come forward to claim ownership or to contest the order, but Dido’s researchers did discover that Fox had bought some of the Krugerrands himself with cash from five different black-market suppliers.

Without the requisite provenance, it would be impossible for Fox to prove ownership. He said nothing when questioned about them. The value of the gold went into the pot that was being claimed by Fox’s victims as compensation.

The rest of the data was, while very interesting, not viable when it came to being used in court or to bring charges. It wasn’t lost and could provide useful background or corroboration in other facets of the investigation.

Thanks to the course and many lectures from John Proudfoot, she knew the perils of presenting illegally obtained evidence to the Police and subsequently to the court. She had a list of seventeen companies that were controlled via a complex web of offshore shell companies. The ownership had eventually been traced to a West Midlands crime family. Those companies were all involved in what is loosely called ‘The Motor Trade’. These companies dealt with all types of vehicles, from small family cars to Heavy Goods Vehicles. The reports Dido was able to glean from the internet suggested that they operated from industrial estates up and down the country and that all of them were close to major roads or motorways. As they were all privately held, their balance sheets provided very little data at all. What they showed was that none of them was actively trading, yet the business premises were very busy according to tools such as Google Street View.

After a couple of days of thinking, Dido sent her computer sleuths off on another hunt for the real accounts. She dangled some bitcoin as a prize for the best result.

She was almost 100% positive that they were the people behind the ‘rent-a-crime-vehicle’ scheme. That was clinched when a connection to one of her student colleagues was verified by the images on an easily hackable security camera. The rest was icing on the cake.

That icing included a short one-page report about another string of companies that were controlled by the same family. These were all involved in property and were known as ‘slum landlords’ in the areas where they operated. One of the paragraphs said that they’d recently been heavily fined for clearing a property while the tenants were out at work. They also owned a skip hire and had a genuine ‘Waste Carrier’ licence. Pieces of a 10,000-piece jigsaw began to fall into place.

With Trish still ‘up north’ and without telling John or Chrissy about her plans, Dido took the train to Rugby, whereupon she took a taxi to an industrial estate not far from Junction 1 of the M6 motorway. This was the location of one of the ‘motor trade’ companies.

“There is not a lot here,” said the Driver,
“Other than a bunch of huge warehouses, some small businesses and a couple of car dealerships.”

“That’s ok, just drive to the end of the road and turn around. Then you can take me back to the station.”

“Ok, love, you are paying the bill.”

Dido laughed.
“My sister was sold a lemon car by a company trading out of the estate. She tried to sue them, but all the letters from her Solicitor came back as not known at this address. I was coming up this way today and decided to break my journey and look for myself.”

As the driver approached the station, the driver asked,
“Did you find the company?”

“I did, and the address she used was right. I took a photo of the business. We can go back to court and get a default judgment against them. Then she’ll send in the bailiffs.”

“Is your sister a lawyer or something?”

“She’s a Barrister and is now based in London and works for the Crown Prosecution Service.”

“Ouch. Well, good luck with that.”

“Thanks,” said Dido.
She paid the bill and gave him a nice tip.

From Rugby, she went north to Meadowhall station near Sheffield. This time, the address of the company was right on the main road leading past the massive Meadowhall shopping centre into the city. Dido walked for half a mile, and as she passed the address, she pretended to take a phone call. As she did, she took a thirty-second video of the property. It was a hive of activity. She could see a large workshop at the rear. One of the roller doors was open. Inside, she could see a couple of cars up on ‘vehicle lifts’. What caught her attention was that both cars had their registration plates partially covered in what looked like black tape. She didn’t pause and carried on to the next bus stop, whereupon she took the next bus into the City Centre and the main railway station. She hoped that what little of the plates was visible might be enough to find out if they were stolen.

Her next stop was Wigan. Another taxi ride to a nondescript industrial estate near the M6 gave her another view of a used car dealer. What interested her was the inner yard. That was shielded from view by high brick walls topped with razor wire. She counted six CCTV cameras on masts watching over all parts of the property, but especially the inner compound.

On the return, she took another video as the cab drove past the premises.

“You seem interested in that car dealership?” asked the driver.

Dido used the same tale as she had in Rugby.

“Be careful of them. They don’t like people complaining about bad sales. Then they slag you off something rotten on social media. From the people on the receiving end, they stop just short of Libel,” said the driver.

“How do you know that?”

“Look online. It is all there on the local Facebook pages. I’ll show you when we get back to the station.”

Dido looked at her watch. She had twenty minutes before her train to London was due.
“That would be good. My sister was up here for her job, and her car was stolen from outside her hotel. That dealer was the first place that could sell her a car that she could drive away there and then. It got her down to Watford Gap Services before the head gasket blew.”

Back at the station, the driver showed Dido the bad reviews of the dealer. She took a photo of the website and gave the driver an extra £5.00 tip for going the extra mile with the local information.

On the train back to London, Dido reviewed the videos and photos that she’d taken that day. The most interesting site was the one in Wigan. They had something to hide, but given the location, it would not be easy to observe the comings and goings. A nearby advertising hoarding gave her an idea. That was backed up by sites such as ‘Streetmap.co.uk’ and ‘Google Streetview’.

What appealed to her was that the next stage of her investigation would be done with Dido well away from the action. After the train made its last stop at Milton Keynes, ironically another location for this mysterious group of companies, Dido pulled out her ‘burner phone’ and sent a message to Janus requesting a meeting.

By the time Dido reached her home in Greenland Dock, a reply was waiting.
“When and where? Can be available in three days from tomorrow.”

Dido smiled and replied.
“Sunday, 1 pm Greenwich Observatory.”

Janus replied almost immediately with an emoji depicting a sailing ship followed by a book.

Dido knew exactly where Janus wanted to meet. She replied with a kiss emoji.

Dido met Janus on the grounds of the Naval College just before 1 pm the following Sunday.

“You are looking good, Janus,” said Dido after a brief hug.

“The same goes for you. I read all the reports about the trial. They all seemed to say that you sucked him in and spat him out. You did good, girl, but he more than deserved it for what he did to you and the others. You kept that very quiet, didn’t you?”

“I did, and for several good reasons. Firstly, would you have believed me if I told you the truth when we were dipping on Oxford St?”

Janus shook her head and laughed.

“The other was that until I could finger him, the fewer who knew my past, the better. “

“I read the report in the Guardian. It was clear that they didn’t like Fox, but the way you sicced him at the end of your evidence was worthy of an Oscar.”

“Thanks, Janus. It was touch-and-go at times, but he deserved it.”

“That was a stroke of genius for you to become a student of his. That must have taken much of the power away from him.”

“That’s thanks to my friend John. He’s a retired Chief Super from the Met.”

Janus smiled.
“You have gone over to the good side of life, haven’t you?”

Dido shook her head.
“What we did together was always with just one goal in mind for me, and that was to see him go down for life. I’ve done that. Now I can get on with the rest of my life.”

“So? Why the call? You were just about the last person that I was expecting to hear from.”

“I have another case that I need help with.”

Janus smiled.
“And you’d like me to help out while you keep at arms-length?”

“I do mainly because of my final year at university starting soon, but there will be a dozen bitcoins in it for you at the end.”

Janus pulled out a phone and spent twenty seconds getting a price.

“Fuck, girl. You mean business. Do you know how much that comes to?”

Dido grinned.
“A little over eight hundred grand at current rates.”

“How the ‘F’ do you have access to that much? I remember you telling us about the risks of investing in Bitcoin, but…?”

“I pilfered it all from Fox’s overseas accounts. There were close to sixteen million in various currencies. Twelve of it was in Bitcoin. None of it was declared to the HMRC, so… I’m going to distribute the rest quietly to his other victims. I’ve engaged a firm of Lawyers from Edinburgh to do that. He’s paying their fees as well.”

“Ok, count me in. What do I need to do?”

“Firstly, this job could be dangerous. The crime family I want you to investigate are not known for turning the other cheek if you get my drift. I don’t want to hear about a body being washed up somewhere around the coast, ok? If there is the slightest risk, back off, and I mean that.”

“Ok, and naturally, I’m on my own?”

“I’d prefer it if there were no provable connections back to me. The family is probably linked to the child sex trafficking ring that Fox was part of… and possibly to a gang who have been raping women for the fun of it and then destroying their lives. By that, I mean erased. No more bank accounts, job history and worse, they clear out the home of the victim while they are in the hospital recovering. In one case, they faked a death certificate and a will and were almost able to get their hands on their life insurance. That requires a lot of organisation and connections.”

“Bastards. Rape is bad enough, but to have your life destroyed like that is beyond the pale.”

Janus thought for a moment before asking.
“If you don’t mind me asking, how the hell did you get involved with a mess like that?”

“One of Fox’s victims had it done to her, but that is not for general consumption.”

“Gotcha on that.”

“Do you still have your key to the lockup in Kensal Rise?”

“I do. Have you been paying the rent all this time?”

“I have. I found it hard to let go, so I kept it going on the odd chance that it might come in useful.”

“And that time is now?” said Janus.

“When you came back with a meeting place, I went to the lockup and left a package in there for you, plus a wad of cash to get you going. Read the brief carefully and think about a plan. Drop your thoughts off there and send me a text when you are ready. It will be more difficult to meet up once I’m back at university. If you need more funds, just say the word. I want this done properly, but in such a way that is totally invisible to the targets, if you get my drift. If you need to do a recce, then do it. If it is possible to get the evidence I want legally, then that would be even better, ok?”

After a slight pause, she added,
“The added complication is that my flatmate is a DC from the Durham force.”

Janus laughed.
“What did I say about going over to the good guys?”

“Janus,” said Dido with a sigh,
“She sort of accepts that I use some unorthodox methods to obtain evidence, so as long as she does not know, then she is ok. I hope to be done with the dark side for good once this case is cracked.”

Janus smiled.
“I think you mean it. Well done, you.”

“Do this job and get me the information that I need, and you can also leave the dark side behind. There will be more than enough for you to settle down with.”

Janus laughed.
“How do you know that I have not been going straight since we found Fox’s house for you?”

“A certain Dutchman contacted me last February. He asked me about you and if you were to be trusted. I told him yes, and especially so as I gave you his contact details, what? Three and a half years ago. For you to sit on them for that long tells me that you would not have made the call unless you had no other choice. Am I right?”

“Only about 90% right. A bad relationship ended with me being homeless and just enough euros to get to meet our mutual friend. When your text arrived, I was just finishing the season working in a bar on Crete. I used his device when I visited the tourist areas. I have enough in the bank to start to think about going legit, but the bitcoin that you are offering could make that a reality.”

“Good for you. Just be careful, understand. I mean extra, extra careful. Make sure that anything you buy can’t be traced back to you. Cash is king, but watch out for CCTV in stores if you can remove serial numbers and burner SIMs. If you have to go abroad to buy things, then do it. My Dutch friend should be able to help you out if needed. You know what I mean.”

“I do, and the last thing I want is a visit from some heavies on a cold, dark night.”

“I’d also like to suggest that you base yourself well away from London for the next three to six months. The cash I have left for you will provide you with a legit place to live, but you should rent some office space for the kit that you need for the operation. I have detailed everything in the lockup. There are three places north of Milton Keynes that are of particular interest to me. I’ll leave it up to you to find a base. The brief contains details of a shell company that I set up a couple of years ago but never used. If you need to use a company name for your rental, then that is there for you to use. Its accounts are up-to-date with Companies House.”

“I would expect nothing less from you, Dido. Your preparedness was why we never had our collar felt while in the dip. It was a hard lesson for some of us to learn, but you were right, as usual.

They hugged and went their separate ways.
Dido walked along the river for a bit and then took the riverboat service home, satisfied with her day’s work.

To her surprise, Trish was waiting for her when she arrived home. Dido took a few minutes to switch her mind from Janus and the crime family to Trish and being with her partner and fellow student.

“Your mind was in a different place when you came home?” said Trish a bit later.

“Sorry, darling. I was deep in thought about finding the people who attacked Chrissy.”

Trish looked at Dido and, after a small shake of her head, she said,
“I know your tells… Out with it!”

Dido sat down with a sigh.
“I went to see one of my old crew about a little project that I need her to do. Nothing overtly illegal, and it is related to some of the loose ends that still exist in the Fox case, and it has a possible link to Chrissy’s case. At the moment, there is nothing legal that I can present to the Operation Chesil team or the NCA.”

“Good. That’s better. Why didn’t you tell me the truth from the outset?”

“Because darling, now that you know you are involved, and you know how I have tried long and hard to keep your involvement legal and above board. At the moment, all I have is a series of possible leads that came from a shady source. If… and that is a big ‘if’, those leads turn into something that we can take to John and then to the authorities, then I will bring you up to speed. At the moment, isn’t it better that you don’t know the details of what the leads are?”

Trish didn’t answer. Instead, she sat next to Dido and gave her a big kiss.

“I missed you, you know,” said Trish when they broke apart.
“Same here,” said Dido as they rubbed noses.

That was a thing that they did together.

“You weren’t supposed to be coming down until Wednesday?” said Dido.

“I know,” answered Trish with a sigh.
“I got fed up with trying not to tell the oldies in my family that I’m in love with the star of the Fox trial. Mum and Dad know everything and are keen to meet you, but all my aunts keep on saying that I should find a nice man and settle down and have children. Most of them don’t fully understand just how evil Fox was. Dad took me up to Barnard Castle last weekend. While we walked around the Castle and along the river, I gave him the lowdown on the case. You are a hero in his eyes, and he is happy for me. Mum is still a bit on the fence, but they can wait. Besides, we have to get ready to resume our studies.”

All of that family interaction was strange to Dido. At times like this, she felt left out of things. Interacting as an adult with members of an extended family was like speaking a foreign language to her. John’s family had disowned him not long after he and his partner Dorothy had started living together. He was her only family worth speaking of.

“Then we need to schedule a trip north one weekend and tell everyone… Don’t we?” said Dido.

“Are you willing to go through the County Durham version of the ‘Spanish Inquisition’?”

“For you, darling, yes, I am. It is time that we made it official, at least as far as your family goes.”

Trish responded by kissing Dido.

“Of course, we have to keep things cool at uni!”

“Yeah. It was bad enough when you flashed your warrant card at them last term, but coming out as a couple would turn them against us big time, especially now that my sexual history is out in the open. Remember what Ollie Wright said when we reviewed the case of Cynthia Payne?” [1]

“Ah, yes, the women involved need to be sent down the mines because they are donkeys, not women!”

“You get the idea. He’s not alone with those views.”

Dido thought for a moment before asking,
“Ok, how do you know that he’s not alone?”

This time, it was Trish who thought long and hard.
“I know that he’s involved with some shady characters. I had to send a report to DCI Reeves here in the Met about him. He got the link because of uni. Naturally, I asked why. The DCI didn’t give me any details, but I put two and two together and garnered enough information to know that either he or his family are up to no good. How bad they are is well above my pay grade, but I’ve been asked to keep a discreet but watchful eye out for him this year.”

It was a version of the truth that was close enough to keep Dido happy.

Dido didn’t respond for a considerable time. Eventually, she said,
“That might explain why he was conspicuous by his absence when the verdict was announced. He was the only person in the class not to wish me well.”

“That’s between us, ok?” said Trish.

“Naturally, darling, naturally.”

What Trish didn’t know was that she’d already connected Oliver to the business premises in Rugby. She needed more proof, and that was where Janus would hopefully deliver the goods, but not being able to tell Trish was burning up Dido from the inside. Sooner or later, she would have to come clean about Ollie Wright and his crime family.

Dido read Janus’s response to the file that Dido had left in the North West London lockup a week later. Trish was off at the National Archives in Kew, starting the research for her thesis. That gave Dido a few hours to spare. She’d already edited her first draft, and now, she was leaving it to stew for a week or so before re-reading it.

Janus’s response was positive but made it clear to Dido that the operation would take some time to set up, and she agreed with Dido that a base for operations outside London would be needed. She provided estimates for the equipment needed for the operation. Dido reviewed her proposal and sent details of a Bitcoin account to Janus. In the account, there was around £5,000 worth of digital currency. That was for the base and the equipment needed to run the data-gathering operation. Janus said that she’d be able to start deploying the kit in a little over a week.

Once the money was on its way, Dido was able to put the whole scheme into a file called ‘waiting’ and get on with preparing to finish writing her thesis. It was all mapped out in her mind. With Operation ‘Janus’ underway, she was able to start writing the conclusion in earnest. In three days, it was done.

The first day back at classes was a day for Dido to explain, to her ability, the various sentences passed on Fox to her classmates. Thankfully, John Proudfoot had prepared her for this eventuality. Trish stood in the background, ready to provide support, but it wasn’t needed.

The previous ‘pro-Fox’ faction in the class had dissolved. The nature of the sentences made it clear to them that Fox was an evil man.

After one week of their final year, Dido and Trish went to John Proudfoot’s for Sunday Lunch. This wasn’t that out of the ordinary, but neither of them was even remotely prepared for what John had to say to them almost as soon as they had arrived.

“I am given to understand that there is an Oliver Winston Wright in your class?”

Dido and Trish looked at each other. Both were surprised by the directness of the question.

“There is… Why?”

“Because the Operation Chesil team has identified his DNA in connection with an attack that took place last April.”

Both of them remembered that incident. It had largely been ignored by the media, but John was keeping them informed via his contacts in the operation.

“One of his brothers was nicked for a hit and run in Basildon last May. The locals in Essex took his DNA when he was charged. He pleaded guilty last week and got three years, as it was his fourth drunk driving offence in less than two years. They uploaded the DNA into the PNC, and thanks to a warrant approved by the High Court, all new DNA is checked for a family match against samples for a few select crimes. Currently, the matches are limited to the DNA related to cases that fall under Operation Chesil. A few days ago, a match popped up. All the experts say that it is a match to someone who is the brother of one of those involved in the April attack. The only brother that could be is Ollie Wright.”

John’s words took a while to sink in.
Dido and now Trish had gone from being taught by a Child Trafficker to being a classmate of a suspected rapist.
“Your next question is if there is some connection between Oliver Wright and Fox?” said John.

Both of them nodded.

“Oliver was always toadying up to Fox, so there might have been one, but that is in the past,” said Trish.

“I agree,” said Dido.
Then Trish said,
“We should look at what he says and does from now on. I’m already doing that for the Chesil team via a request from my Chief Super. Your tip about the DNA explains why they were so interested in him.”

“My advice to both of you is to sit back, watch and wait. Don’t give him any hint that you know about his dark side,” said John.

“That will be easier said than done,” remarked Trish while looking Dido in the eye.

“We will stay cool and not do anything to raise his suspicions,” said Dido confidently.

Trish knew that Dido had a plan in mind, but at that moment, she could not think what it was. For Dido, the news was just another nail in his coffin and one that would make getting the evidence that Janus would hopefully acquire even more admissible when it came to the CPS.

“That is for the future. Now, we are expected to eat Chrissy’s Sunday Lunch,” said John as he wrapped up their little chat.

Dido’s face told Trish that she wasn’t too keen.
“Chrissy has been having lessons from the chef at the Dog and Duck. Her reports are good, so please give her a chance. We all know how fragile her confidence is…”

The meal turned out better than any of them had expected. Chrissie enjoyed the well-deserved praise for her efforts.

As September turned into October, the trial seemed to be an almost distant memory for Dido. The first results of the searches of the ‘Dark Web’ had come back. They made for interesting reading and some long and often heated discussions between her, John and Trish. The accounts of the Wright family empire, while unusable as evidence, showed a clear pattern of criminal behaviour and even clearer connections between the businesses in the Midlands and the North.

John and Trish were all for giving the data to the NCA team, but Dido was adamant that they needed to provide a more rounded picture of what was going on with the shipment of vehicles to be used in crimes and that the evidence had to be admissible. The ‘dark web’ stuff could be used to build a picture, but not in the prosecution of the family.

“Half a story is no good. We need to give them the full story, all nicely wrapped up in a folder with a red ribbon and for the providence of that evidence to be unbreakable,” said Dido.

The red ribbon was how legal files were secured. John saw the implication right away.

“How do you propose getting that non-dark web data?” asked John.

Dido smiled.
“Holmes had his ‘Baker Street Irregulars’. I have my old friends from the time when I was lifting wallets and purses.”

Mention of those friends caused John to sit up and take notice. Once again, Dido was playing the lawyer questions game with him and Trish. Her body language told those present that she had a plan to get the information that she was talking about. He should have expected nothing more from her.

With every passing week, he saw more and more bits of himself in the way Dido went about her studies and her investigations into the crimes done against Chrissy. She was going way beyond even his wildest expectations. His only worry was that she’d leave Trish in the dust.

That worry was confirmed when Dido showed him her final year dissertation on the day of his 67th birthday, a week later. When he read it, he was stunned by its quality and breadth. It was so good and on point that he was crying his eyes out by the time he’d finished it. Those tears were a mixture of joy and anger. Anger because the episode with Fox had taught him that there was almost no lower limit to how depraved human beings could get and how those people deserved better when it came to the justice system.

It was not even Halloween, and here was Dido with a finished dissertation that would not be handed in for months. After the fifth reading, his list of comments was only six items long. He’d checked all the references at least once. To him, it was a faultless piece of work. The sad thing was that it was touching double the maximum number of words allowed for a dissertation. Reducing its size would most certainly lessen the impact.

That prompted John to send a redacted copy of the paper to two old friends in the Met Police. Both were now at the rank of Commander. He asked for comments.

The results came back within a week. It was a damming piece of work that exposed some serious shortcomings in the way not only the Met Police was run but also how almost every other force in the nation operated. Both of them wanted to take the report to the Commissioner and the Home Secretary; it was that good.

John told them to hold fire. Yes, there could be some changes, but this was the dissertation of an undergraduate student. Any adverse publicity could jeopardise her chances of obtaining a degree.

One of the men twigged and asked John outright, ‘Was this written by the same person who destroyed Fox at the Old Bailey?’

John responded in the affirmative.
The Commander heaped a whole lot of praise on Dido. Her testimony had done more than destroy Fox. A lot of people in the Police, the Law and even the Home Office had taken note of what went on. He added that this draft could totally alter the way similar crimes are investigated. Both men agreed that they should keep quiet about the paper for the time being.

John sat back and smiled. His protégé was growing up fast. The next few months would be interesting, but he was in no doubt that if Dido needed his support, he would be there for her. She had come so far since that day in the supermarket car park that he was determined not to let her fall at this point in her quest for Redress for the wrongs done to her and Chrissy.

[1] Cynthia Payne : A South London Brothel Keeper. She entertained the rich and famous. The film, ‘Personal Services’, is about her life.