Stories of revenge are not as common in Crime Fiction as many would think. The bog-standard fare of Criminal commits a crime and the cops solve it (aka a 'WhoDunnit') and bring the bag guys to court are where it is at be it Sherlock, Rumpole, Taggart or {insert TV/Film name here}

This story is told from the point of view of one of the victims.

For many readers, this will not be an easy read. The crimes that were committed before this tale starts are not for the faint-hearted as it involves Child Trafficking, Paedophilia, rape, sodomy and sexual exploitation of children and corruption in society at the highest level. None of these crimes are described any great detail in the text other than one assault. Most of them happened before the story began.

It you suffer from PTSD then it might be advisable to stop reading now.

The tale is split into five ‘books’ and has a total of 46 chapters. It is not a short novel so please take your time, and I am sure that it will grow on you.

---

The late May Bank Holiday had been a good day for John Proudfoot. He’d won 3rd prize at a rally for classic Ford Vehicles that had been held at the Old Warden Collection in Bedfordshire. His newly restored Cortina Mk2 1600E in black and gold had gone down well with other 'old guys' as he put it, who were there with their cars. He didn't know of a better way to spend the day than with a group of other old fogeys talking cars and watching even older aircraft take to the cloudless blue sky.

On his way home, he stopped at a supermarket to buy a few groceries, including a bottle of his favourite wine for his meal that night to celebrate his success at the rally. He wasn’t sad that he’d only been placed 3rd because professional restorers entered the two cars that beat him. John was just an amateur tinkering in his retirement. It beat playing golf like most of his former colleagues did, hands down.

John’s good mood disappeared in a flash when he saw someone trying to break into his car as he emerged from the supermarket with his shopping.

His first instinct was to rush over and try to put a stop to it, but for some reason, he didn't. Instead, he watched for almost a minute as a young person struggled to open the passenger door. She seemed oblivious to other shoppers glaring at her. After the third admonishment from a fellow shopper, he decided that it was time to act.

“Just what do you think you are doing, young lady!” said John as he arrived at his car.

The young lady in question was trying to break into a car using a 'slim-jim' device.
His words temporarily startled her. Her first impulse was to flee, but the device that she was using to open the passenger door was stuck in place. After a second or so of hesitation, it became clear that she wasn't going to leave without it and a large rucksack that was stuffed into a shopping cart. From her appearance and the shopping cart, it was more than likely that she was homeless.

“What’s it to you what I am trying or not trying to do?”

John smiled at the retort. At least she had not replied with a string of expletives.

“Well… for starters, that is my car that you are trying to break into. There is nothing worth stealing inside, and because you are not trying the driver’s door, I guess that you were not intending to steal it. As I fitted it with an immobiliser, you would have trouble doing that… So, what is it that you are after?”

“Who the ‘F’ are you? Some sort of pig?”

He smiled.
“I was, as you so eloquently say, a ‘pig’. I’m retired now. Former Detective Chief Superintendent John Proudfoot at your service.”

“Are you going to nick me? You’d have to catch me first.”

John laughed.
"No, I'm not going to nick you. As I said, I am retired."

“So? What the hell do you want?”

This young woman intrigued John, so he tried a different approach.
"Why don't I show you how to open the door?"

“Why the hell would you want to do that? I don’t give head, you know.”

"That is the last thing I would ever want from you. As to why, isn't it better to know how to use the tools you have at your disposal more effectively?"

“Isn’t that committing a crime?”

“That is where you are wrong, young lady. As this is my car, then, I can’t be committing a crime, can I? I don't have any intent to steal the vehicle. Once you know how to do it quickly and efficiently, then there is less chance of you being caught in the future. Then you will avoid getting nicked, as you so crudely put it."

“Man… you are mental, but as it is your car… please go ahead?”

John put down the two shopping bags and stepped forward. The young woman moved away. Her body language told him that she was very suspicious of him.

With a simple, deft motion, John moved the device and the lock clicked open.

He removed the tool and handed it to the woman.

“Want to try for yourself?”

It was her turn to smile.
John locked the door and moved away.

This time, she unlocked the door in seconds.

“It pays to know how the internal mechanism is constructed.”

“Ummm, thanks.”

There was a period of silence between them before she said,
“Are you really not going to nick me?”

“I’m not going to nick you. But, if you don’t mind me saying, you whiff to high heaven. Could I offer you a place to get clean?”

“I don’t give head…”

"You said that already, and I don't want any 'head' as you put it. I have an annexe at my home. There is a shower and a place to wash your clothes. If I am not mistaken, you are a lady of the road, but even the queens of the highway need to have the occasional wash and brush up. How about it? I could even fire up the BBQ and cook the steaks that I just bought?"

To reinforce his words, he held up the shopping bag that contained the wine and the steaks.

As if by some magic, her stomach let out a loud belch.
"When was the last time you had a good meal?" he asked with a smile.

“I ain’t getting in that car with you?”

“I would not think of asking you in your current state of cleanliness. I live about a mile from here. Straight down the main road for half of that,” he said, pointing to his right.
“Then turn right into Elm Lane. My house is at the top of the hill. It is called ‘Suncrest’. If you want a chance to get clean and have a good meal with no strings attached and a night in a bed, then you are more than welcome.”

She didn’t answer.

With a shrug of his shoulders, John put his shopping into his car and drove off. As he exited the car park, he could see her standing there. She hadn’t moved. He shook his head and concentrated on driving home.

For some reason, this young woman had piqued his interest. There was something about her that didn't quite make sense. In his years on the force, he'd encountered a good number of people on the street who were homeless, often for no fault of their own. He could identify those who were permanently homeless from those who had hit rock bottom and were trying to fight back. She didn't exactly fit neatly into either category. The long-dormant investigative juices in him began to rise to the surface once more. He wanted to know more if only to satisfy his curiosity. If that meant feeding her and giving her a bed for the night, then it would be well worth the investment.

John, as he had promised the girl, had gotten the BBQ out and was in the final stages of getting it going when he saw a movement out of the corner of his eye. At first, he ignored it. If it was her, then he didn't want to scare her off as soon as she arrived.

With the charcoal well alight, he turned towards where he had seen a movement.

“Hello. You made it then?”

She didn’t respond. Her body language told him that she was still very uneasy.

“There is a small apartment above the garage. The door is open, and there is a bolt on the inside of the door. There should be plenty of hot water, and I have put some shampoo and towels out just in case you would come. I have also left some old clothes on the bed. If you don’t know how to use the washer, just ask, and I’ll put it on for you, but I did leave some instructions.”

She didn’t react but stood still, her eyes fixed on the containers of food that were on the table next to the BBQ.

John thought that she was about to leg it. If she did, then he'd cook just one of the pieces of rump steak that he'd bought earlier.

When he looked up again, she had gone. Her now empty shopping trolley was outside the garage, and the door to the upstairs apartment was closed.

More than half an hour passed before she emerged from the apartment. She was wearing his old clothes, which hung loosely on her small frame. Everything was a good number of sizes too big for her, but it would do for now. Her now clean hair glistened in the late afternoon sun.

As she came closer, he suddenly knew what it was that had intrigued him about her. That in itself presented a problem for John, but it could wait. Food should come first.

“Feeling better?” he asked as she gingerly approached the BBQ area.

“Yes, thanks.”

“Did you get your clothes into the washer?”

“I did. Thanks for leaving some instructions.”

“What do I call you?”

She thought for a second before saying.
“Dido.”

“Like the singer then?”

“Sort of.”

“Well, Dido, welcome to my home. How do you like your steak?”

“I don’t know. I’ve never had any before.”

Her response momentarily threw John. The mystery deepened.

“There is a first time for everything. There is a salad in the bowl. Help yourself to that and some juice, and take a seat.”

"Thanks… John," she said with a lot of hesitation in her voice.

As John attended to the grill, he said,
“I meant what I said before. I don’t want sex from you. You aren’t my type. I am just a former cop trying to lend a hand to someone who I think needs at least a bit of help, if only for one day.”

Dido didn’t answer. She was too busy enjoying the freshly baked and still warm French bread that he’d put in the oven as soon as he’d arrived home. She’d spread some butter on it. The sight of her licking her lips pleased him. There was a lot of mystery about her, and it was up to him to try to pry it from Dido without spooking her.

“Everyone I have ever met who was like you, living on the streets, has a story to tell. If you feel like telling me yours, then I’ll listen and try my hardest not to pass any judgement unless you want it, but as with many problems, just talking about them can help.”

“If I told you the truth, you would not believe me, so I should say nothing.”

John smiled. He knew a canned answer when he heard one.

“Here you are. This should just fall apart,” said John as he handed Dido a plate with her steak and a baked potato wrapped in foil with a helping of baked beans on the side.

“Thanks. It looks good.”

John sat down with his plate and put some tomato relish on the side. Dido looked on as if she did not know what to do next.

“Please, help yourself.”

Dido watched John carefully carve his steak into slices. She tried to copy him but failed. She pushed the plate away more out of frustration than anything. The way she held the fork suggested that she had the mental age of an eight-year-old, but she wasn't backwards by any means. Another clue to the deepening mystery of who she was and why she was homeless.

John smiled and cut up her steak.
“Why don’t you put some of the meat in what is left of that French stick and add a bit of relish?”

The sight of Dido munching away at her meal made him happy. It had given him another clue about her past. The picture that was forming in his mind was not a good one.

When she’d finished, Dido looked over at the grill.
“Would you like some more?”

“Please, but I don’t want to impose.”

“You are not imposing on me it is nice to have some company. I’ll get some sausages from the fridge.

While the sausages were cooking, John took his chance.

“Dido, I want to say something that might offend you, but ever since we met in the car park, there has been something about you that troubled me. I think I know what it is. Would you like me to tell you why I think that you are on the street?”

“Do I have any choice?”

“You do. Say no, and I’ll shut up.”

“Go ahead. I want to see just how wrong this former pig will be.”

“Dido, please. I am not a pig. I was a Police Officer for thirty-two years.”

“Ok, cop it is then.”

John smiled progress was being made.

“Here goes. I think that you are about sixteen years old. You have not had a chance to grow up like a normal child. The way you held the knife and fork is much like a child aged about 7 or 8 would do. Then,”
John swallowed before adding,
“While you give the appearance of being a female, you were born male.”

Dido sat motionless. She began to cry. It was as if the wall that she had carefully built around herself had just been blown sky-high.

“How? How did you know?”

“That is for later, Dido. Your reaction tells me that I was right.”

“So? What is it to you… cop!”

“Dido, if you would like someone to listen and not be judgmental, then I might be able to help. If not now, but in the future…when you are ready to talk, then I’m ready to listen.”

“What’s in it for you? Apart from laughing about me when you talk to your pals at the golf club?”

John smiled. She must have found the set of clubs that he kept in a cupboard in the apartment.

“I used to have the odd round, but I don’t any more. I found restoring the car that you tried to break into earlier far more satisfying mentally. Most of my former colleagues could win gold medals for boring people to death when talking about golf. That’s why I rarely play these days.”

She looked at him with one eyebrow cocked. It was as if she was saying… ‘pull the other one…’

“I mean it, Dido. There is a reason you are on the streets and not with your family.”

The merest mention of ‘family’ had caused her to visibly shrink. It was as if someone had sucked her dry of what little confidence she had managed to build up.

“I won’t mention the ‘F’ word again. Some bad things have happened to you in the past. That much is clear. I can’t offer you much in the way of help if I don’t know what wrongs have been done to you, but I can offer you a safe place to stay if you want it?”

John dished up a plate of sausages with some more tomato relish on the side. Dido hesitated.

“No strings, Dido. You don’t have to talk now or in the future if you don’t want to. Please eat.”

Again, she raised one eyebrow.

John moved away and went into the house. He hoped that his next move would start the process of getting her to trust him.

When he returned carrying a framed photo, the plate of sausages was empty. John smiled.

“This might interest you,” he said as he put the photo down on the table in front of Dido.

“That is of me and my partner of just over twenty-five years.”

Dido picked up the photo. Her sticky fingers marked the frame. He knew that they’d wash off.

“She is very beautiful, but why are you showing me this?”

“Because Dido, she was like you. She was born male, and because of cancer, she had to have her male parts removed before puberty.”

Dido's grip on the frame tightened.

“Was?”

“Dorothy died two and a half years ago. She went into hospital with a prostrate problem… well, she never recovered. I miss her every day.”

“And you want me to be her?”

“No, Dido. You are very much your own person. One who is trying their best to fight society. Something happened to you that stopped you from experiencing your teenage years. If, at some point in the future, you want to talk about it, then I am here, ready and able to listen.”

Dido sat there for nearly ten minutes looking at the photo. It was clear to John that she was fighting to hold back the tears.

John took out a handkerchief from his pocket.
“If you want to cry, please wipe your eyes on this. You can keep it.”

“Thank you.”

“No, Dido. Thank you.”

“Me? What have I done to need to have your thanks?”

“You have trusted me enough to come to a stranger’s home and eat my food. For that, I want to thank you. It is but the first step in a long road. One day, I have to hope that you will trust me enough for you to tell me what happened to you. Until then, you can come here and use the apartment over the garage. For that, you will need this.”

John put down a key on the table in front of Dido.

“That is the key to the apartment. I’m trusting you with it.”

“You don’t know me from anyone else who lives on the street,” blurted out Dido.

“True. So, prove me right and begin to trust me. Perhaps one day I can help you begin to help you start to sort out your problems?”

John immediately felt foolish for restating the point about trust.

Dido was nowhere to be seen the next morning. Her shopping trolley was gone when John looked out of the window just before 07:00.

It was with some trepidation that he went into the apartment after breakfast. To his huge surprise, he found the place immaculate. Not a thing was out of place. Even the bed had been remade with ‘hospital corners’. That both impressed and worried John. Impressed in that she should have spent the time, but worried because the way it was done indicated that Dido had probably been institutionalised, but he guessed that the only institution that she'd seen the inside of was not of her choosing and certainly not an official one.

John sat on the bed and thought back to a case that he'd investigated almost twenty years before. A young girl of South Asian heritage had been imprisoned by her parents because she had attacked the man to whom she had been promised to in marriage a day after she was born. He was already thirty years old at the time. It was their first meeting, and only a week before, she was due to go to Pakistan to get married. She stabbed him twice with a pair of scissors. The potential snub to the reputation of their family made them hide the girl from the age of ten until she managed to sound the alarm almost six years later. Dido was exhibiting many of the same behaviours as that girl. The worst part of that case was that the girl took her own life before her parents were brought to trial. He did not want that to happen to Dido.

******

Dido did not return to John’s home for nearly two weeks. For a while, John thought about looking for her but decided against it. Nevertheless, he regretted leaving things so open with Dido despite knowing how fragile she was emotionally.

When she did return, Dido had a black eye. John didn't pass judgment or ask how she had come by the injury. He knew that Dido would tell him in her own time.

That time came the next morning.
“I was panhandling outside Mansion House tube when another homeless guy accused me of stealing his jacket. I bought it at East Ham Market a few days before, but he would not budge. Then he hit me right in the eye and angrily tore it off my back. The last I saw of him, he was heading towards Blackfriars Bridge Road.”

John thought for a moment.
“Perhaps you should go back to the market and buy another jacket? This time, mess it up so that it does not appear new.”

“Yeah. You are right. It looked too clean. I wasn’t getting any ‘donations’ anyway.”

“A lesson learned, I guess?”

Dido said nothing for a bit. Then she said,

“Thanks for not tearing me off a strip for failing like that.”

This time, John smiled.
“No need to admonish you, Dido. It was clear to me that you had learned a valuable lesson about fitting in. But why are you panhandling, as you put it?”

“I’m looking for the man who kept me prisoner for more than five years. By appearing to be a homeless person, most people don’t even give you a second glance.”

John’s opinion of Dido had just gone up considerably. He tried desperately not to nod his head. There was no way he could even begin to visualise what sort of hell that had been, so he reverted to some general advice.

“That is a great idea, but just be extra careful. If this man sees you and realises who you are, then your life could be in danger. No one is going to miss another homeless person turning up dead in the river. I am assuming that you have some information that leads you to the city. I don’t want to know unless you want to tell me.”

John’s words startled Dido.

“You make it like you care what happens to me? I’m nothing to you…”

John shook his head.

“I care about you as a person. You deserve to not only get even with the man who abused you but about your future beyond that.”

“Bollocks.”

“Not bollocks, as you put it. Why else did I give you the key to the apartment? I care about you as a person.”

“You just said that.”

“I did, and it is true.”

“Why? Why do you care about me? I’m not worth the trouble.”

“Dido… That is where you are wrong. You have just told me about a terrible wrong that was done to you. It is clear to me that someone robbed you of literally years of your life. Your inability to use a knife and fork and never had any steak before gave me some clues. Then you say that someone kept you prisoner, added to the bits of information you had given me since your first visit. Those clues, when combined, made it easy to say that I care about you. When you trust me enough to tell me all about it, then I’ll be in your corner if you want to get justice for those wrongs. Bringing people who commit crimes to justice is what being a copper for all those years was all about.”

“You would not believe me if I told you what happened to me,” retorted Dido.

“Why not tell me and find out? Remember, I spent a lifetime in the Met Police. A lot of that was clearing up after scumbag criminals left a disaster scene in their wake. People, places and especially families were destroyed by a criminal act or acts and without a second thought to the consequences.”

Dido remained silent.

“If you are not ready, then don’t worry. I’m not going anywhere. When you are ready, I’ll be here.”

Dido just answered with a small nod of her head.

“As for your future, I was involved in a case many years ago where the parents of a young girl kept her locked up because she refused to take part in an arranged marriage. She escaped and raised the alarm, but her mental state was so bad that she could not see a future for her, so he committed suicide. I don’t see that in you… yet. At some point, it is highly likely that you will suffer from a period of depression because your search has not gone anywhere. Please come and talk to me. As I said, I’m not going anywhere.”

*****

Dido came to John in late August and said,
“I’m ready to speak.”

John just nodded his head and directed Dido to go into the garage, where he had set up a video recorder and some lights. Dido sat in a single chair and waited. She nervously fiddled with the cuff on her sweatshirt.

“Just let me introduce the recording with the date, time and place,” said John.
“After that, it is over to you. Speak until you have nothing more to say today. I will not interrupt you. When you are done, just say, ‘I’m done for now’. Do you understand?”

Dido looked scared but nodded her head. John started the recorder and made sure that it was focused on her.

“This is the first video statement of Dido. No surname was given. It is taking place at the home of retired Chief Superintendent John Proudfoot, on the twenty-sixth of August, 2012 at 13:45.”

“Hello…” said Dido.

“Dido is not my given name. I was born Thomas Charles Day. We lived in Southend on Sea. When I was eight, something happened, and suddenly, I found myself a prisoner of a man called Martin Schneider. He kept me locked up in a cupboard for what seemed like days. I knew that it was Schneider because he came to my house a few times and spent hours deep in conversation with my father. I went to sleep one night only to wake up in terrible pain and found that my hands were handcuffed to a bed. A medic told me that the pain was down to my male parts being surgically removed. I remember being told that from now on, I was a girl and like all girls, I had to sit down to pee. They’d done something to my throat. It was so sore, and I could not speak. I cried for days. I did not know why my parents left me or who could have been so cruel to… to do that to me.”

Dido started to cry. John felt rotten. Rotten because he had encouraged Dido to speak. He had no idea that her secret was anything remotely like this.
John kept the recording going while Dido wiped her eyes with the now grubby handkerchief that he’d given her and recovered her composure.

“Every day, someone would feed me what was like baby food, and I would get injected with something. I was only released from the cuffs after what seemed an eternity, but at least I was not in pain any more. This woman with a foreign accent gave me a dress. She said, ‘This is how you will dress from now on’. Then she gave me boots with small heels that were locked on my feet. I wore them all day and night for what seemed like weeks. I was told to walk up and down in my room. It was very small. Just three steps up and three steps back. Every day, this woman would come into my room and give me an injection in my bum. I counted the days, and every ten days, she would change the boots to ones with higher heels. She would show me how to apply makeup, which made me look a lot older. If I failed, I would get no food and double injections. They made me very sick, so I didn’t refuse her instructions after that.”

Dido buried her head in her hands. After a few minutes, she continued.

“I have no idea how long I was held there, but one day, a strange man came into my room and took out his thing. Suck me off, he said. I had no idea what he meant. Then he forced me to allow him to put his thing into my mouth. He told me what to do. Eventually, something came out of his thing, and I was made to swallow it. It tasted salty, and I almost choked that first time.”

John desperately wanted to give Dido a big hug.

“The man came back every day until I obeyed him and sucked him off. If I resisted, he would just stick his huge thing down my throat and pee. I nearly choked more than once.”

Dido fought back the tears.

“Then another man came and put some slimy liquid up my bum. I had to go to the toilet right away. When I was done, he made me sit on his thing until he went inside me. It hurt.”

This time, she cried. When she had recovered, she continued. All the time, the video recorder was going.

“I went to sleep one night, and when I woke up, I was somewhere else. The room I was in had all these bars on the door, and on the other side were two men. They told me that this was my home and, that I was to look beautiful every day, and that I was to entertain them and their guests. If I failed to satisfy them, I would not get anything to eat for three days and double injections.”

“The older man would let me out of what I now know as a cell every three or four days so that I could have a shower. I was told to grow my hair long and always wear makeup. Failure to dress prettily or be made up would result in a punishment. That was at least three days without food. He… the older man, made it clear that if I repeatedly failed to perform, then I would be replaced. When he said that, he drew his hand across his throat. There are hundreds more like you just waiting to fill your lovely high-heeled boots.”

After those words, Dido moved out of the camera shot and cowered in the corner of the garage. John switched off the recorder before going and putting his arms around Dido. At first, she froze at his touch, but slowly, she relaxed. He sat with her for more than an hour while Dido slowly recovered from her ordeal. Dido was showing all the classic symptoms of PTSD and probably worse.

John said nothing but held her tight. Words had failed him. He had known that something had robbed Dido of her adolescence, but even in his wildest dreams, could he have ever imagined that it was as bad as what he’d just heard?

Daylight was fading fast before either of them spoke. It was Dido who broke the silence.

“Thank you, John.”

“I didn’t do much.”

“Holding me was all that I wanted. You make me feel safe. Thank you.”

John could not answer that. Even trying to imagine what mental and physical torture she had brought to the surface in her statement was an impossible task.

What made it worse was that her words to the camera made it clear that today was just the tip of the iceberg. John knew that there would be many more days like this before either of them could begin to move on with their lives.

John watched the video that evening and made a transcript of Dido’s exact words. He had to grit his teeth several times just to get the job done. He did not sleep at all well that night. All he could think about was giving the people responsible for hurting Dido a good kicking in their male parts before cutting them off without the benefit of anaesthetic and then making them eat their penis… raw. After a few hours, he calmed down.

The idea of helping Dido get justice began to form in his mind. His problem was that he’d never worked on a case even remotely like Dido’s in all his years in the Met Police. Getting to a point where Dido was even in some small way able to get some closure for all the hurt that had been piled on her over the years would not be an easy job. The people responsible for mutilating her and then sexually abusing her for years deserved redress for what they had done. If he could help that happen in some small way, then he’d do it.

Dido left early the next morning to avoid speaking with John. She did leave a scrawled note on her neatly made bed that just said,

“Thank you for being there yesterday. Dido.”

John, for his part, could not help worrying about Dido. He knew just how fragile she was emotionally after her ordeal the previous day, but she was gone, and there wasn't a lot he could do about it. She was her own person. All he could do was be there for her when her PTSD returned. His years of dealing with officers with it had taught him that it was one of the most unpredictable ailments to befall the human race.

Later that day, John packaged up the tape of her statement and one copy of the transcript and took it into London and delivered it to a solicitor whom he had used in the past. One of the lawyers in the practice was also a certified notary. John had the package notarised by the man for a small fee. Then he went to a private bank in Mayfair, where he left the recording in the vault after opening a safe deposit box account. He was sure that there would be more packages to follow before they got anywhere near an arrest, let alone a conviction. Having these unedited and notarised statements would satisfy most requirements for a ‘chain of custody’. He kept one copy of each for himself. They would be deposited with a friend for safekeeping.

After a quick bite to eat in Holborn, he went in search of an old friend of his from the Met Police, former DCI Gary Shaw. Gary had been retired a lot longer than John, down to the injuries he had received in a bad road traffic accident while in pursuit of a man who had raped a woman in broad daylight. Since his retirement, he'd run a Private Detective Agency.

“This is a surprise, John. I thought that you were tinkering with that car of yours?” said Gary when John was shown into his office.

“She’s all done. I have shown her at a couple of events this summer. That wasn’t what I came to see you about. Here, take a gander at this….”

John passed over a copy of the transcript of Dido’s video recording from the previous day.

Almost immediately, Gary’s good mood disappeared. He read it through twice. The shaking of his head grew more profound during the second reading.

“Is this for real?”

“It is, I’m afraid.”

“Fuck. These people need to be hung, drawn, and quartered twice.”

“Very much my feelings. I had no idea what she was going to say when we started. If I had… I might have tried to stop her.”

Gary shook his head.
“You did right by not stopping her. This is dynamite,” then Gary hesitated.

“But there is no proof other than her body? Is that what you were trying to say?”

John nodded.
“You know me too well, John. What do you need me to do?”

“I’d like you to do a bit of gentle digging into the Southend connection. Discretion is the name of the game. I’d start with public records just to see if what Dido says has any credence.”

“Credence? Come on, John… you can do better than that?”

John smiled.
“Ok, perhaps credence was the wrong word. I just want to check out her family and what happened to them between 2000 and spring 2006.”

John reached into his pocket and took out an envelope, and put it on the desk in front of Gary.
“There is £500 in there as a retainer.”

“Put that back in your pocket, John. I owe you this for sorting out the debacle of my finances when Debs left me when I was laid up in the Hospital. I could easily have topped myself when I found out that she’d done a runner with all our savings and left me minus a right foot in the hospital, struggling to walk even two steps.”

John smiled.
“Then take the money for paying informants should the need arise. Something was going on between her family and at least one organised crime gang. I just need to know what happened to her parents. Extreme caution is the name of the game here.”

“Fair enough. I will take extra care with this job. If they did traffic Dido, as she said, there could be some well-connected bad guys in the loop here, and they won’t take kindly to someone like me coming in and upsetting their apple cart if you know what I mean?”

“I do, Gary. There is no rush. Dido is nowhere to be seen, but I expect that she is somewhere in the city searching for the man who had kept her prisoner. I did tell her that it was dangerous, but you know young people…”

Gary chuckled and smiled.
“At that age, they think that they know everything but know nothing. We were like that once, weren’t we, John?”
“We were, and we were lucky to have a Sergeant to beat it out of us before we did some damage. Dido is on her own. In time… and perhaps one day, she will let me inside the walls that she has built around her. Until then, I can just do what I can to help.”

“If I didn’t know better, I’d say that she has become the daughter that you and Dorothy never had…”

“As you say, Gary,” replied John, smiling.
“But in truth, she is, and I owe it to her to try as best I can to make her as whole a person as I can and then, eventually, a valuable member of society. Yes, there is a long way to go, but now that the Cortina is done, I need a new project to keep me sane, don’t I?”

John didn’t wait for an answer. He took the transcript from Gary but left the envelope on the table. He had placed a single sheet of paper inside the envelope. Written on it were all the details that Gary would need for his investigation.

Once John was back on the street, he almost went in search of Dido but decided against it. There were more things he could do in the background that might help her in the long run.

Dido spent two fruitless weeks outside Moorgate tube station without seeing her target. Finally, she had to admit to herself that John was right about small bits of information all needing to come together to create the big picture.

After she'd come clean to John, he just smiled. He had several different smiles. This one didn't say 'I told you so', but 'well done for learning that lesson'.

"My thirty-odd years in the force taught me that investigations are not like they are presented to us on TV. Ninety-nine per cent of the time, we don't crack a crime in under an hour. It normally takes weeks, months, and even years of painstaking and often soul-destroying work before you even get a whiff of a solution. There was a series of murders that were only solved almost thirty years after the last victim had been discovered. I know that is not the sort of information that you were expecting, but it does give credence to the saying, ‘Rome was not built in a day’.”

John smiled. Dido didn’t seem convinced.
“It is the job of the lead officer to keep morale in those under them up despite setbacks just like the one you have just admitted to. Keep this up, Dido, and we’ll make a cop-out of you yet.”

“Now, who’s telling porkies?”

“Not me. I mean it, Dido. It is already clear to me that you are an extraordinarily smart young lady. Plus, you are very streetwise, and Operation ‘Redress’ will be a nice addition to your CV when we get him and his friends sent down for a large number of years.”

“What’s with this ‘Operation Redress’?”
John could tell that she wasn’t impressed.

“All major investigations are given names. I thought that ‘Redress’ would be a good name for this one.”

“Redress? What’s wrong with ‘Retribution’ or ‘Revenge’?”

John shook his head.
“There is a dictionary on the shelf in the library. It should be right by my desk. Look up the definitions of all three and think about what your ultimate goal is. Revenge or Retribution is, in my mind, too immediate. He, whoever he is, needs to pay for what he did to you in public.”

“I don’t know who he is,” countered Dido.

“You will find him. Then again, and again, and again until you get a handle on how he moves around the city, where he works, what his job is and even where he likes to get his lunch. Remember that every time you encounter him, that is one of your nine lives down the drain. Sooner or later, he will recognise something about you, and your number will be up. There is no doubt that he has connections to some bad people. How else did he procure you? Those people would only be too glad to dispose of this homeless woman for a suitable sum of money. To them, it is just business.”

Dido was frustrated but understood his reasoning.

[the next morning]
Dido came into the kitchen carrying the dictionary.
“I did as you wanted me to do, and ‘Redress’ is a good name. Not as obvious as the others.”

“Thank you, Dido. Coffee or Tea?”

Dido gave him a stern look for all of two seconds. After a brief shake of her head, she said,
“Tea, please. Some of that Darjeeling that you have in the green tin.”

Dido was starting to learn how John would say ‘we are cool’.

December that year.

Dido had become something of a regular visitor to John’s home. He tried his best to get Dido interested in some sort of education, but her search for the man who had imprisoned her always got in the way. John didn’t mind that much. He was content to sow a few seeds here and there and wait for them to germinate. He was playing the long game.

Dido had taken John’s words of caution about her nine lives and the risk of being recognised. She had coloured her hair blonde badly. Her roots were very obvious, but it seemed to change how she appeared to people in the street.

On one visit, Dido confessed that she survived on the streets by not relying on the results of her panhandling but from a little ‘dipping’.

“My father taught me from an early age. Then he’d send me to the Pier in Southend on busy weekends, and I’d come home most days with a few hundred quid. Now, I only take the cash. Any wallets I lift are put through the letterboxes of banks or solicitors. There are still plenty of blind spots in the City of London where the CCTV cameras can’t see you drop them off. Outside the square mile and especially to the north in Hoxton or around Old Street or the Angel, it is even easier.”

“I’m going to pretend that I didn’t hear that, especially as you only took the cash. I hope that the rest of the wallet gets reunited with their owner. At least you are trying.”

“But…” said John, smiling.
“As you seem intent upon a little bit of crime, it might come in useful when you find where he lives to be able to, shall we say, investigate a little further if you get my meaning.”

Dido looked at John and raised an eyebrow.
“You mean lock picking as a way to break in?”

John’s smile and nod of the head gave her the answer.
“I know how to pick some locks. My rat of a father had started to teach me before he got in way too deep with the wrong people.”

“Didn’t you try to pick the lock on your cell?”

“If I had something to use as a pick, then I would have. They never even let me have anything sharper than a plastic knife, and then, I was watched while I ate the crap that they called food. I know now that it was little more than baby food. Then they added all the hormones to it. I only found out about them by accident. That’s why I have these beauties.”

Dido cupped her ample breasts.

“How about I set up some locks for you to pick when you are here?”

“Why? Why should I learn to commit a crime when my goal is to bring a criminal to justice?”

“As you say, he is a criminal. As a Police Officer, I found that in many cases, I had to think like a criminal to catch them. Picking pockets is insignificant in the grand scheme of things. A few steps up the ladder is the ability to pick a lock quickly and quietly, which is a great tool to have in your pocket. Then there were the jobs that we did where it was advantageous to make a silent entry to the premises that we were going to search, legally, of course. Picking a lock or two made that possible. Going in with a heavy door opener was not always the best course of action. In my mind, catching them in the act rather than trying to escape or destroy evidence was always more satisfying.”

Dido frowned.
“Besides, a little look-see to confirm that we have found the right house before calling the cavalry to make an arrest would save an awful lot of egg on an awful lot of faces should the police raid the wrong address. And… such a raid could give him the heads-up and allow him to dispose of any evidence and skip the country. That is something that we don’t want to happen now, do we?’

Dido had learned to read John's facial expressions.
“What aren’t you telling me?”

John chuckled.
“Ok, there is something else, but one step at a time, ok? You have poo-pooed my attempts to get you back into some form of education… Think of this as crime school.”

“John… sometimes you are the most frustrating person I know.”

“How many people do you know… besides me, that is?”

“Ok, you win. Lock picking it is.”

John didn’t move.
“What else?” asked very impatiently.

“I have something for you. It is on the shelf behind you…”

Dido turned around and found a phone, two spare batteries and a charger.

“I know that it is not the latest model, but it will allow you to call me, and its battery lasts days. I took the liberty of putting my mobile and home numbers into the directory. It is a Pay-As-You-Go device, and as you come into cash, a top-up can be bought for ready money from many convenience stores. It has a camera, so if you see him, be careful, but as they say, a picture is worth a thousand words. Just knowing who he is would be a huge step forward, but possibly some steps backwards.

“Backwards? Why?”

“If what you said about the people who came to visit you, he is probably a person with influence and/or contacts. At the moment, Dido, just be extra careful, ok?”

Dido sat looking at the phone for almost a minute.
“Thank you, John. I don’t know what to say.”

“Er… You said ‘thank you’. That is all I need.”

Dido blew John a kiss. He went red in the face.

“Lock picking, Dido…”

“Yes Boss.”

Dido went back to the apartment over the garage while John went off to do the weekly grocery shopping.

A week later, Dido was helping John wash the dishes after lunch.

“How is the lock picking going on?”

"Nice try, John. You know very well that I have not had time today to try those new five-lever locks that you have set up for me in the garage."

She had already learned the basics of lock identification, which pleased John. It confirmed his view that Dido was a smart cookie and someone willing to learn new skills.

“Well? There is no time like the present now, is there? While I cook dinner, you can try them and, at the same time, think about your plan to find out where he travels from each day. If you want to involve that little gang of dippers, then even better.”

Dido stood in front of John with her hands on her hips.

“Sometimes, John Proudfoot, you are the most frustrating person I know. Can I do nothing to surprise you? How did you know about them?”

"That’s the second time you have said that to me recently. I will take that as a compliment. As for the dippers, anyone with a trained eye could see you direct them as they worked Oxford Street.”

Dido glared at John.
“Dido, I'm here to keep you as honest as possible. The way that you have whipped that bunch of misfits into shape is admirable. Before you came along, they were just a bunch of chancers. Now? You have forged them into a formidable team."

“You know this how?”

"Constable Patek, whom you seem to know quite well from the conversations that he told me about. His father was my driver before I retired, and I spoke at his son's passing out event at Hendon Police College. I ran into his father at a reunion two weeks ago. He mentioned this young woman who seemed to be picking pockets right under the noses of the local bobbies on the beat. He described you perfectly.”

Dido shook her head.

“I put two and two together and followed you one day last week. Once the rush hour was over, you headed for the west end and met up with your team in a room over at a garment wholesaler in Great Portland Street just south of New Cavendish Street. I saw you move effortlessly from a panhandling homeless person to a small-time crime boss. Dido, you are far more talented than I could have ever imagined."

"Retired? Sometimes, John, I don't think that you are."

“I was fully retired until you came into my life. You have given this old dog a new lease of life. Just remember that I’m here to help you in any way I can. Just keep yourself safe… for me. I want this man and anyone else who abused you put away for the rest of their natural, but it has to be done properly understood.”

“I know. Evidence has to be properly obtained, or some scumbag lawyer will make a song and a dance of it and get it thrown out when it comes to trial.”

“Exactly.”

“Then why am I learning all those dark arts… other than to make sure that we get the right house?”

John sighed.
"Sometimes a case will get to a point where it stalls. You know 'who did it', but you don't have the legal proof to make an arrest and then charge the culprits. As I have said before, a little off-the-books look and see can help a case no end. I mean, look, but don't touch. Then, an anonymous tip-off and we… as in the Police, would go before a magistrate and get a warrant to search the premises. The most important thing is that you leave no trace of your visit that could come back to cause the case to be thrown out later. As long as the 'visit' was not sanctioned by the police, it is just one criminal who, in the act of committing a crime, found the Crown Jewels and told the cops. I'm not a cop any longer, so? Besides, a huge number of tips get phoned into Crimestoppers by criminals. Those calls are not traced or recorded. Those crooks often discover nasty things about other crooks that make their stomachs churn. Paedophilia and child exploitation are just two of the crimes that get reported that way.”

“And that is highly illegal, is it not?”

“It is, but if we can put the real bad bastards away, then we are doing society a favour. Besides, more often than not, those little look-and-see operations end up with nothing. As I said earlier, that, in turn, saves the embarrassment of an Inspector going through all the trouble of obtaining a warrant and finding nothing at all. Failed warrants don’t look good on the Chief Super’s desk on a Monday morning if you get my drift. A warrant that fails to turn up anything makes the magistrate less likely to grant that Inspector or Chief Inspector a warrant in future if the supporting evidence is even the slightest bit flimsy. Human nature aligns perfectly with the saying, ‘Once bitten, twice shy’ besides, undies do that all the time.”

“Undies?” asked Dido.

"Undercover officers. They have to ignore crimes going on around them to get the real dirt on the top dogs. Sometimes, they even have to take part in a crime just to gain the trust of the real bad guys."

“I think I am starting to understand this crime-fighting malarkey!”

“Dido, malarkey is not what I would use to describe the job of keeping the public safe from the likes of ‘him’.”

“Have it your way, John.”

Then she disappeared towards the garage, leaving John to prepare dinner. He watched her go and wondered how much of this lesson would stick.

His observations of her on the streets of Westminster had impressed him. When he added in the information that Constable Patek had given him strictly off the record, his opinion of her had risen considerably. At least some of his words had stuck in her memory. John was under no illusion that a lot of water would have to flow under a lot of bridges before she could rest easy.

Dido stayed the night with John and left in time to get the first Central Line train into Liverpool St. She travelled as far as Stratford, where she followed John’s hints and changed onto the first of three busses that would take her to Moorgate or a spot between the Tube station and bus terminus at Finsbury Circus.

Her early departure allowed her to avoid giving John an answer to the series of questions that he'd asked her over dinner the previous evening. John’s words about covering her tracks had struck a chord with her. Even though it was a PITA, she knew that it was the right thing to do. That wasn’t the only thing on her mind.

It wasn’t that she didn’t want to give him an answer about her future. She’d made up her mind by the time she had finished doing the washing up. She’d gone to bed mulling over her initial decision and used some of the arguments that John had used against her to try to pull it apart. She had failed. That didn’t mean that she would tell John immediately. Dido wanted to do some more research of her own, before telling John. She was going to use some of his words against him but in a nice way. He’d often say to her, ‘Think before you act, or you may have to repent from here to eternity’. It had taken her a while to understand what he meant by those words, but when she did, she took them to heart.

The mere fact that someone was thinking about her future beyond getting even with ‘him’ was not lost on Dido. It was a new experience for her and not one that she was comfortable with at the moment.

Dido spent the following week alternating between Moorgate and the nearby Finsbury Circus. The latter was the terminus of several bus routes. On the days when the weather was too cold to stay outside for long periods, Dido sought the sanctuary of Islington Public Library. That was when she did her research into Criminology and the entrance requirements. Getting three top-grade A-levels scared the life out of her. That was way outside her comfort zone. Then, the little matter of the cost of the courses added to her level of disbelief. There was no way that she could even begin to cover the cost of a degree with the proceeds of her dipping alone.

A third day of rain forced her to abandon her usual spot on the pavement. The lure of the warm and dry library had been her refuge in the past. It was once more, but this time, she had a different purpose for her visit.

Dido sat in the library, trying to think about John. There was no way that she was going to accept his charity without at least some argument or pushback. Despite his help with her cause, she was not going to become dependent on anyone, let alone a man. Then she thought about conversations that she overheard while sitting on the cold pavements. A plan began to form in her mind. It was still very early days, but it was something that was not for John to know about because it was probably slightly illegal.

While Dido was held prisoner, she had no option other than to depend on 'him' and his son for everything for so long to survive that there was no way in hell that she was going to repeat that ever again. John had made it clear that Dido was not his type, but he was a man, and men were the enemy. It had been men who had robbed her of a life. John would have to earn her full trust. At that moment, he provided a useful ‘safe space’ for her and someone to talk to. While she trusted him not to want sexual favours from her, she was unsure about his long-term plans for her other than his suggestion about studying criminology.

In a coffee shop near City University, she found a discarded undergraduate student guide which talked in more detail about the cost of a degree. The figures began to add up. Accommodation, food, clothing and transport were just the bad icing on the top of a rancid cake. Dido knew very well how much a good day dipping for cash brought in. People were not carrying the same amount of cash they had when she first went dipping on Southend pier. Since Dido had resumed ‘dipping’, she had resisted selling credit and debit card details up to now. It looked like she would have to ‘dip’ into that. Thanks to some street gossip with other ‘dippers’, she knew of a device that could sniff out credit card details without needing to gain access to the card. That looked like a way to obtain the numbers. She had heard of something called the ‘Dark Web’ from another panhandler and that there were markets where the numbers could be sold. That was not something that could be researched in a Public Library. Dido returned to the city with a few dozen more questions that needed answers.

The arrival of the weekend had not resulted in her seeing her target. She didn’t go back to John’s home because she wanted to tell him more than her outline agreement to his plan for her future. She would add a few ‘buts’ to that agreement when she did see him again.

'The Future' was something that she had never thought possible during her years of captivity. 'He' and his son had gone out of their way to ensure that she never knew what day it was, let alone the time of the year. The ever-changing length of daylight that had come through a very dirty window high above her head had been her only clue about what time of year it was, apart from the middle of winter when the limited heating in the cellar failed to keep it warm. ‘He’ only turned it up when ‘guests’ were expected.

Since meeting John, she had come to understand that keeping a captive ignorant of the world was SOP for people like ‘him’. It made the captive even more dependent on the will of the captor than that of a prisoner in jail. Do it long enough, and something called 'Stockholm Syndrome' could kick in, and the prisoner becomes a captor. Dido had been given free rein to use John’s library of law and policing books. It had been hard going at first, but things had gradually gotten easier over the summer.

Her reading age was improving, but it was just one of the mountains she would have to climb. Since she had been panhandling, weekends were her time to think about the way forward.

Because she decided not to visit John for the weekend, Dido ventured onto the concourse of Liverpool St Station during the evening rush hour on Friday night. Twenty minutes of 'dipping' provided her with enough cash to stay in a cheap hotel in Bayswater and for some clean clothes from a fast fashion outlet at the western end of Oxford Street.

After a nice meal, a good night’s sleep and a long hot shower, Dido went into the city on Saturday and acted just like any other tourist. She walked along the south bank from Waterloo to Tower Bridge. As it was a fine day, there were a lot of people about. For some reason, she felt safe in the crowds. She marvelled at the skill of the skateboarders and the myriad of street performers, especially the mime artists.

As she approached Tate Modern, she found a group of street performers on their unicycles strutting their stuff outside. The audience was very appreciative of their skills. Dido admired the talent on show. She even took a few photos of the action on the phone that John had given her before continuing on her walk in the general direction of Tower Bridge.

Feeling a lot better, she went for an early meal at Borough Market before heading back to her hotel. Being able to act like a real person every so often was beginning to become an addictive habit. A habit that cost money that she didn’t have most of the time.

On Sunday, Dido continued posing as a tourist. She started at Speakers Corner. While a few of the speakers were interesting, it was hard to resist the odd ‘dip’. She resisted partly because of the six officers from the Royal Parks Police who were keeping the onlookers safe from people like her. She allowed herself to smile when they nabbed a small girl who could not have been more than 7 or 8 years old. Her facial features indicated that she came from either Romania or Bulgaria. Then, Dido spotted the girl’s handler in the crowd, looking very angry. The girl had not palmed off any wallets since she began watching.

For a moment, Dido thought about having a quiet word with one of the Parks Police Officers. It was only a moment. Then she moved away before temptation got the better of her, although Dido had seen the handler around the western end of Oxford Street, between Selfridges and Marble Arch, in recent weeks. After a shake of her head, she watched three of the officers take the young girl away. Her handler looked like he wanted to kill someone. The look on his face told Dido what to do.

Because of that look, and on her way out of the park, she did something that was totally out of character for her: she gave an officer a very good description of the handler.

“Consider it a free tip from someone trying to stop a young girl from a life of crime. As he is a handler, there may be more like her operating in the Regent Street area. She might be a victim of Child Trafficking.”

The officer tried hard to get a name from her, but Dido just shook her head and walked away. If they described her to any of the Met Officers who patrolled Oxford Street, they’d know who it was; otherwise, she was just another concerned citizen.

After an hour of window shopping and fighting the tourists who seemed to be ambling around even more aimlessly than usual and fighting the urge to dip a few pockets, she gave up and after grabbing a coffee from a café on Marylebone High Street, she walked north towards Regents Park and London Zoo. Dido vaguely remembered being taken to a wildlife park in Essex by her parents the summer before… before it happened.

Wandering around the Zoo brought out Dido’s inner child. It had been suppressed for far too long. For a while, she felt happy and contented. It didn’t last very long.

As soon as she saw the Mountain Gorilla’s enclosure, it was as if she was back in her cell. The thick steel bars on the den door brought it all back to her. Her emotions got the better of her, and she began to cry and shake with fear as it all came back to her with a vengeance.

The act of showing any emotion had been physically beaten out of her early on in her captivity. She’d been expected to dress like a doll to please her visitors and remain passive even if the clients hurt her. When she failed to show enough pleasure in servicing her visitors, 'he' would punish her by not feeding her for up to a week. The injections of her 'vitamins' did continue. Without food, they would make her ill.

Dido fled from the Zoo and found a seat on the towpath of the nearby 'Regents Canal' where she cried her eyes out even though they were screwed shut. Slowly, the shaking stopped, and she opened her eyes.

Dido sat there just gazing into space with watery eyes for more than an hour. The memories of her years behind bars had all come back to her at once when she saw the bars on the inner den of the Gorillas. For only the second time since her escape from ‘him’ had she felt like this… alone in the world.

The lure of her safe space at John’s home eventually dragged her off the bench and back to her hotel. After checking out, she took the tube from Lancaster Gate station to Epping. When the train reached the surface at Stratford, she sent a text to John.

“Need help. At Stratford, but coming to Epping.”

John replied.
“I’ll be there.”

True to his word, John was waiting for her at the station. His gold-coloured Cortina was easy to spot amongst a sea of predominantly grey, white and black cars.

Dido got in and put on her seatbelt. John looked like he was going to say something, but the way she stared straight ahead made him stop. Instead, he drove her to his house in silence all the time, wondering if she had found him by literally bumping into her on a bus or something.

John let Dido sort herself out in her own time once they had arrived at his home. All he said was,
“When you feel like talking, you know where I’ll be.”

Dido responded with a small nod of her head.

John could see that she had been crying and that it would not take much to start them off again. His late partner had days like this when her emotions, coupled with the hormones that she took, simply got on top of her. He knew not to force the issue but to be there when they needed him. Dido was very much the same.

More than two hours later, Dido came into his kitchen. She had washed her face and even put on a little makeup.

“Thank you,” she said in a voice hardly above a whisper.

“I didn’t do much.”

“You did… just by being here and giving me a place to stay.”

“Ready for something to eat? We can talk while we eat… if you are up to it, that is?”

“I’d love something to eat.”

“Good,” said John, smiling.
“I made some French Onion Soup yesterday. I was going to freeze some of it, but there is more than enough for us. I also made some bread.”

“You will make a great wife someday,” joked Dido.

“Too late for that. It keeps me busy and away from the Golf Course and the bores of the clubhouse bar.”

Dido didn’t have much clue about golf. All she did know was that many men who were retired seemed to spend all their time on the course. It was a good place to nick things from their cars. That was why she had obtained the ‘slim jim’ device that she was trying to use when they met for the first time.

“That would be great. Thanks.”

“How can I help you?” asked John after he’d dished up the food.

“I was ok until earlier. I went to the zoo and… saw the bars on the gorilla’s cage. The one they use to separate them when the female is in heat.”

“Did everything nasty that had happened to you all come back with a vengeance?”

She nodded.

“I think… I think that you may be suffering from PTSD.”

“What is that?”

“Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. Lots of former military get it. The same applies to anyone who witnesses a tragedy or has spent a long time in a traumatic situation”

“So, it is normal then?”

John shook his head.

“No, it isn’t. I think that you should see someone. They can help you get through these incidents.”

“Not a cure, then?”

Again, he shook his head.
“There isn’t a real cure for PTSD, but getting revenge for what he and his buddies did to you will certainly help. For most, it is more of a question of being able to manage the PTSD, its early signs and how to manage while you are experiencing an event.”

Dido looked sad.
“It isn’t your fault. None of this is your fault,” said John, trying to reassure her.

She didn’t reply. Instead, she began to eat the soup. John knew that this was not a slight on him but her way of not wanting to say anything else for the time being.

“Who is this person you want me to see?” asked Dido more than twenty minutes later.

“Doctor Nichole White. She treats a lot of people with PTSD.”

“Can you trust her?”

“Why?”

“Because… in case you had forgotten, I’m not eighteen. If I go and see a doctor, don’t they have a legal duty to turn me into Social Services?”

John smiled. Dido was starting to think for herself again.

“Nicole will not turn you over to the authorities. She is not like that.”

Dido sat silently again for several minutes.
“Ok. I’ll see her. Can you set it up?”

“I will. All it will take is one phone call. She knows a little about you. When I gave her a heads-up, she told me not to press you about it and to wait for you to seek help. That you have just done.”

“Like a junkie then?”

“Very similar. They have to want to kick the habit. That is the first step on the road to recovery. You needed to want help. You asked me for help. I have not done very much.”

Dido looked at John and managed a small smile. Then, she did something very much out of character for her. She stood up, came around to his side of the table, and hugged him. This was the first time that they had really touched since the episode of the first video recording. Then, it was he who had initiated contact. This time, it was Dido who trusted him.

To John, this was a huge step forward in her willingness to trust him.

For Dido, this was the moment when she decided that John was looking out for her in a good way and was not the enemy. She could trust him. It wasn’t an easy decision, but to her, the way that he’d talked to her as an adult and an equal was the deciding factor.

Dido saw Dr White a few days later. She had come to John’s house for the first meeting just to keep the distractions down to a minimum. John disappeared to see a mechanic friend of his, apparently to talk about a new cylinder head for the Cortina. Dido guessed that it was just an excuse to let the Doctor feel no pressure from him.

Dido was understandably nervous at the prospect of baring all to a stranger. After thinking about it for a bit, it was really no different to what she had done on that day with John when her bravado got the better of her.

Nicole began by introducing herself and then stating what she knew about Dido. This was an attempt to put Dido at ease.

In return, Dido tried to talk, but what came out of her mouth was almost gibberish. Dido was struggling to bring some sense to her problems, but Nicole was not John.

Nicole tried another way through her defences.

“John told me that you had an episode while you were at the Zoo?”

Dido looked down at the table but did return a slight nod of the head.

“He said that the sight of the bars on the Gorilla enclosure was the cause?”

“Suddenly, I was back in the cell where he kept me for years.”
“Dido began to cry.

Nicole was very patient. That was her job… to listen.

Dido sat talking with Nicole for almost four hours. Both of them were tired at the end, so it was good when John turned up with a Chinese takeaway for lunch.

During the meal, Nicole outlined the plan that she and Dido had agreed on. John would be playing a small yet essential part in the treatment of Dido's PTSD.

Dido was quite downbeat after her session with Nicole. John didn’t press her except to reassure her that he would always be there for her when she had episodes in the future.

The next day, Dido seemed a lot happier with life. Now that she knew why she had reacted as she did and had some tips on how to combat a PTSD event, she was almost ready to return to her search for the man who had abused her for so long.

John took her to Epping Tube station early that afternoon. His parting words were,

“Now that you know at least one of the triggers you have to be careful of, just don’t get nicked, or you could end up in a cell again. While you might have an event, the people in the Police Station won’t know that you have PTSD and think that you are just acting up. I will get some cards printed for you that explains what you have, and I’ll add Dr White’s contact details. If you ever get picked up, be sure to give the custody officer one of the cards. They should know how to handle someone with PTSD. The job of the custody officer is solely to look after the welfare of people in custody and not to investigate crimes. Helping you prevent a PTSD event falls right into their job description.”

Dido took a few seconds to digest what he was saying.

She didn’t answer him but gave him a big hug. Then she was gone.

Dido had always been a person of few words, but since her bad experience at the Zoo, she had been even more introverted than ever when she was in the presence of people she did not trust. John was worried about this, but he had a plan in his mind that could help her be more comfortable interacting with people.

Dido returned to John’s late the following Friday evening. She briefly said hello to John before going to the apartment and bed.

John did not argue. Dido looked like shit. It was more than likely down to a lack of sleep.

She appeared for a late breakfast, looking a lot better.

“Tea?” asked John.

“Please. Two bags, please.”

“Rough week?”

Dido nodded.

“Then just relax and let me do all the chores.”

“I can’t let you do that. I have done my bit ever since I came here, and I’m not stopping now.”

“You can and will just for this weekend. I insist.”

Dido, to her credit, didn't fight John's position. She just looked weary.

After breakfast, John said,
“Last weekend, what did you do on Saturday? You never said?”

Dido managed a smile.
“Other things rather got in the way, didn’t they?”

“Well?”

“I went to the South Bank. I even visited Tate Modern. A bit weird but different. All part of your grand plan to broaden my knowledge of the world. I have to admit, I liked the National Gallery more…”

“What were the highlights? If the Tate Modern was a bit of a bust, what did you do then?”
“I wandered along the embankment back towards the London Eye. It was very enlightening.”

“Enlightening? In what way?” asked John, who seemed to be genuinely interested in her experiences.

“A real melting pot of people doing their thing and just enjoying life. Some of the tricks those skateboarders were doing were crazy. A few crashed, but they just got up and tried again.”

“There is a message there, isn’t there?”

“I suppose so.”

“What else?”

“This guy on a Unicycle. Doing leaps and spins. I think I managed to get him using the camera on my phone, just like you said.”

“Can I see them?”

“I don’t think that they are any good.”

“Ok. I promise not to criticise, but I will give you a few hints about improving your camera skills.”

“I’ll go and get the phone.”

Dido returned a few minutes later.

“I got that cable we talked about when I gave you the phone. You can connect the phone up to my TV,” said John.

“And see every blemish and cut-off head?”

“No, Dido. It just makes it easier for two of us to view them.”

Dido just handed John the phone.

“Here we are. Dido’s masterpieces volume 1”, said John, trying to get her interested in the whole thing.

John put the first picture of the performers on the screen.
“Impressive. And his head wasn’t cut off!” he remarked.

When he put the third image of the Unicycle rider up on the screen, Dido let out a yelp.

“What’s wrong?” asked John.

“It… it’s him. That’s the man,” she said with a definite tinge of panic in her voice.

John came and put his arms around Dido. It had taken months of gentle work to get her to even let him touch her. Slowly, the level of trust between them grew, and now he could hug her.

“Which one is it?” when he let her go.

“That one. The guy with the bald head and moustache.”

John went over to the screen and pointed to one of the bystanders.
“This one?”

“Yes. That is him. That is the man who kept me prisoner and… “
Then she broke down and cried…

John comforted her once again. All the time, his eyes were on the image of the man that she had identified.

John Proudfoot knew the man very well. They had crossed swords more than once over the years while he was a serving Police Officer. The task of getting redress had suddenly got several orders of magnitude harder.

“Do you know him?”

“The face seems familiar, but I can’t place it. Let me take a photo of him.”

She didn’t react other than to glare at the man with pure hatred. John could see that this was real hate. It's not some pretend feeling. If she got hold of him, he’d be lucky to escape with only his manhood shoved down his throat. That was something to work on for the future.

John took the photo feeling awful for not letting on that he knew a lot about her captor. All he could do was prepare her for the reveal, and that was not for that day nor the next. She had to be in the right mental state to take in the enormity of what he tell her about the man who had kept her captive for so long.

Dido went back to her 'panhandling' early the next morning. This time, she settled down outside the entrance to Farringdon Thameslink Station.

Her chosen spot was not that far as the crow flies from Moorgate, so she took a bit of a chance on that being an alternative route to work for her quarry.

After five wet and cold days sitting for five hours a day on the pavement close to the station, Dido gave up and decided to head back to John’s home for a bit, or R&R. Part of her ‘on the streets’ persona was that she could not be seen taking the tube, Thameslink or London Overground services in the centre of the city. To keep up that ‘show’, she took the No 63 Bus to Kings Cross Station.

As she got off the bus and looked around for her next bus, the No 259, she saw him on a No 214 bus that had just pulled away from the adjacent stop.

She turned away and swore several times. Her reaction made her miss her connection.

What made it worse was that the route the No 214 took started at Finsbury Circus, and she had used that very same bus route during her stint outside Moorgate Tube, which was less than 200m away from the terminus of the bus route.

Dido kept silently cursing herself all the way to John's home. Not only was she annoyed at missing him and that she had failed to use the camera on the phone that John had given her, but what was worse was the inevitable dressing down that John would give her when he found out what she'd done.

She would never tell him, but she looked up to this man who was nearly old enough to be her grandfather, who had taken her in and helped her when most people would not have even given her the time of day and had proved to be on her side in this quest. Then she changed her mind. John’s words, ‘learn from your mistakes’ and ‘don’t be afraid to admit that you got it wrong’, came to haunt her on her way to his home. She resolved to come clean.

To Dido's surprise, all John wanted to do was hug her.

“Aren’t you angry at me?”

“No, Dido, I’m not angry or pissed off or anything else. These things happen, but it isn't as bad as you might think at the moment. You have identified that the Moorgate/Barbican area is key to your search. That is a big positive step forward."

“But…?”

“No, but’s Dido. You have done more on your own than a team of detectives could in six months, given that the team would not have had a photo of him and only a vague sketch of his face.... yet, and it is highly unlikely that this man has a criminal record. At the moment, the odds are that you have not been recognised by him, so carry on with your operation, and you will get there."

“But…?”

“Time is on your side. As long as the prime suspect does not know that you are looking for them, they will make a mistake. Patience will win the day.”

Patience was not something that Dido possessed a lot of, but she was learning.

It was at times like this that John regretted that this was not an official investigation. If it was, then a search warrant would be obtained for the CCTV footage from the bus. Dido knew the date and time of the bus stopping at Kings Cross. If Dido saw 'him' from the road, then he would be on the bus CCTV as it covered the whole of the lower deck. He mentally sighed to himself. It wasn't official, and that was all there was to it…

Dido had been visiting John Proudfoot for more than six months when, over dinner one evening, he said,

“I have some news for you.”

“You have a hot date tonight, and you want me gone?” replied Dido slightly sarcastically.

John chuckled.
“The only hot person here is you, my dear. No, I engaged the services of a Private Investigator to go back to your life before you were abandoned by your parents.”

“Abandoned? Yeah, right.”

"Dido, I know what they did was about as bad as it gets. They did bad stuff and then legged it to pastures new, leaving you behind to suffer. I call that abandonment, ok?"

Dido decided not to get into an argument with her mentor.
“So? What did the private dick tell you that I didn’t?”

“Dido, I thought that having another view of your early life might give us a clue as to who the people were that sold you on to the traffickers.”

That period in her life was very much a blank.

“The report says that the local cops had their eye on you because of your dipping on the pier when suddenly you and your family were gone. It was as if you and your family had dropped off the face of the earth. The only clue was that your mother flew from Stanstead to Amsterdam and then on to San Francisco. On the same day, your father flew from Heathrow to Madrid and then to Miami. Because you were not with either of them, the local police assumed that you had gone to live with a relative. The report also states that your father was a person of interest in a series of betting shop heists on the other side of the Thames Estuary in Kent. Places like Gravesend, Dartford and Rochester.”

“I knew that he was into bad stuff, but he kept all that from me. All he wanted from me was a steady supply of cash to fund his criminal activities. The train that runs to the end of the pier was perfect for a bit of dipping when it was crowded at weekends in the summer. Out of season, the place was a bit of a ghost town. In winter, the only chance of a bit of dipping was when decent teams came to town to play Southend United.”

“The P.I. found that a family of iffy characters named O’Connell, who ran a couple of bookies in Essex, loaned your father money to set up his last heist, which went badly wrong when their getaway car was boxed in outside the shop by a council refuse truck. The O’Connell clan were, as we used to say when I was on the job, a family of considerable interest. Your father and the rest of the robbery crew got away by the skin of their teeth but without any of the cash that they had just lifted. The Kent Police knew who had done the job but had no evidence. The getaway car was towed but didn’t bring up any DNA, which was a real head-scratcher to the Kent Police. It turns out that your father owed the O’Connells around thirty grand plus interest when your parents disappeared.”

“So, the O’Connells sold me?”

John shook his head.
“They, like all good bookmakers, had laid off the debt to a Dutchman called Erik Van Dreart. He was a nasty piece of work. Customs and Excise had been on his trail for years. Lots of little bits of nothing, but they knew that just under the surface, he was a big-time smuggler but one who was always two steps ahead of Customs agents. It is more than likely that this Van Dreart sold you to the man who was responsible for your mutilation. That side of crime is very much ‘need to know,’ and unless you are on the inside, you don’t need to know.”

“Smuggler? As in illegal immigrants? And… you said ‘was’?”

John shook his head.
“Whatever was there to be transported from Rotterdam or Antwerp or wherever into the UK. Drugs, artwork, diamonds and yes, even people if they were paid enough. “

“Did he take me abroad? For the operation? I vaguely remember some language other than English when I was recovering.”

"That's where that bit of the trail goes cold. Erik Van Dreart’s body was found drifting off Great Yarmouth seven weeks after your parents went missing. That’s why I used the past tense.”

“What does all this mean to me?”

“Not a lot, Dido. I had high hopes that the P.I. would give us a lead, but they didn’t.”

“What about these… O’Connell’s?”

“That’s where it gets weird. A week after Van Dreart’s body was found, they sold up their shops and other property at a great loss and went back to the Irish Republic. These days, they are running a Garden Centre near the city of Cork and are not on the radar of the Irish Guarda.”

“It does not make sense?” said Dido.

“Same here. It is as if the departure of your parents was the catalyst for something that we have no clue about to happen in the criminal world and for the players to follow your parents out of the southeastern Essex area. The Essex CID probably know what happened, but short of going to them, we are not going to find out, and at this stage of the investigation, we don’t want to involve the cops now, do we?”

“It is strange… but there has to be more to it than that?”

“I agree,” said John.
“But for the time being, it is enough. If you remember your plan… digging into how you ended up with him was for when he was in jail.”

“I’d forgotten that, but yes. At least we know that my parents planned their exit from the country, and it seems to me that I was always surplus to requirements.”

Dido fell silent.

John sat watching her. While the news wasn’t that good, at least Dido had admitted that she was never part of her parents’ long-term plans when the shit hit the fan.

“What’s next?” she asked after a while.

“I had some dealings with the NYPD and the LAPD in my time on the force. I will make some informal enquiries about hiring a P.I. over there to try to track down your parents. It might not be easy as you said, they had planned their exit from the country before giving you to the O’Connells … and the USA is a huge place and has more than six times our population spread over a vast area.”

“Can we… can the Police go after them even though they are in Ireland?”

“If later investigations result in concrete evidence against them, then I’m sure that the HMRC would love to get their hands on that family. The PI estimated that they took off owing around a hundred grand in unpaid VAT and Income Tax, but that was just a guess.”

Dido pushed her plate away, her appetite gone for the moment.

“How much did this all cost you? It can’t have come cheap?”

“Dido… Leave the cost to me. It is my pleasure to do anything I can to help you get justice.”

She managed a smile. He was willing to throw money at her case, but he was retired, and her memory of retired people was that they never had a lot of money to spare. That’s why she had never ‘dipped’ people who appeared to be over 60 years old.

“Thanks, John.”

“Now, Dido, ready to learn some more things?”

She groaned.
“What now? How to crack a safe?”

John chuckled.
“That will come later. The garage is not exactly the right place to store several different safes…”

“So?”

“Watching you painstakingly put the little bits of evidence together has been fascinating. What I am about to say may seem strange, so don’t even think about answering me right now. Sleep on it for a week.”

Dido was suddenly very alert.

“What I’m suggesting is that you consider a career as a criminologist. As I have said before, you have a talent as an investigator. The way you observe people is just unnerving. The descriptions you have given me of people going about their business are uncanny. When you told me about the priest with a bit on the side… Brilliant.”

Dido went rather red in the face.

“Dido, honestly, I would have loved to have had even one of you on my CID team. Many of the people in CID are next to useless when it comes to solving crimes. They might have been a great uniformed officer, but the skills needed in CID are far more diverse. Patience and observation are key skills that many who move out of uniform into CID simply don’t have. I blame TV for that, but I digress. What about it?”

“Stop right there, John Proudfoot. I know your little game. This isn’t the first time that you have mentioned something like this.”

“So? What it means is you are going back to school. You have missed so much, but with appropriate tuition, I am sure you can get the qualifications that you need to gain a place at university. The best criminologist I ever worked with in my time on the force got her degree from Cambridge after leaving school at sixteen and working on the production line of a biscuit factory in Wembley for three years. Then, she did an Open University Degree before going to Cambridge for her Masters. For someone who left school with three poor GCSEs, that is remarkable. I see that you have the ability to do the same.”

“Me? Getting a degree? Cambridge? Now you are kidding me…”

“I am perfectly serious, Dido. You have a good brain and an excellent memory, and you can manage a team, as is evidenced by the success that your Oxford Street Irregulars have had in recent months. I have seen you at work, and I am impressed even more so as it all appears to be so natural to you.”

“Thank you, John. You have given me a lot to think about, but I could never afford it in a million years.”

John smiled.
“Not even with those tips you get from people walking by you all day?”

“John Proudfoot!”

“Dido, it would be naive of me to think that you don’t pick up tips. Finding out about the Roman Catholic Priest with a mistress led me to think a bit more about all the data that was going into that pretty little head of yours. Tips about pending deals would be par for the course. It all depends upon what you do with it. Knowing you as I have come to do these past months, I would hazard a guess that you have found someone to take those little snippets of information and turn them into hard cash. The money belt around your waist is noticeably fatter than it was three months ago.”

John left the unasked question on the table.

Dido looked at her feet for several seconds.
“John, you are frustratingly good.”

“I didn’t reach the rank of Chief Super without having at least a little bit of talent.”

“You are only partially correct,” said Dido with a huge grin on her face.
“I have invested most of it through this broker I… I lured them into letting me give him a blow job. Then I told him how old I was. We came to an arrangement, if you know what I mean.”

“So? What is Dido worth these days? Just an approximation will do.”

Dido thought for a few seconds before replying.
“Cash? About eight hundred. Funds? About seventy grand, but I lost around three grand this week when the market dropped, and the pound/euro exchange rate went down as well.”

“Just be careful, Dido. This broker might just up and leave with your money. Does he know that you are a ‘non-person’ at the moment? There are risks, Dido. I get the feeling that you are too trusting of others.”

“I know. That’s why I am looking for another outlet for my information. Spread the risk, I think you call it?”

“Well done, Dido. Spreading the risk is good, but just be careful. On the street, you may have the advantage, but in the dealing room? They rule the roost. You have to play by their rules. It is a different game entirely.”

John smiled.
“And you can start spreading the risk by doing the washing up.”

Dido stuck her tongue out at John but took his hint.

John just got back to reading his newspaper. Dido’s intelligence was there for everyone to see when she chose to reveal it. He wondered just how long she could continue with her double life. He’d seen undercover officers get badly hurt when their cover story slipped just a little bit. With this man… He was under no illusion that he’d have her killed if he discovered her aims for him.

While he mulled a few troublesome clues in the cryptic crossword, he made a decision that would make or break their relationship. It was time to let Dido know about Fox. When she was done clearing up the kitchen, she stuck her head around the door to the lounge.
“All done. I’m going to put on some washing, she said, smiling.

John folded up his newspaper and put it into the wastebasket.

“Dido, come and sit down for a minute. I have something to tell you.”

“Ok, grand master, I am all ears?” she said jokingly.

“What I’m about to say is not a laughing matter. I have tried to find the right time to tell you this, but the longer I keep this to myself, the harder it will be.”

“This sounds serious?”

“My dear Dido, it is very serious.”

He leaned forward.
“When you showed me that photo of the man who had kept you prisoner, I recognised him in a flash. He and I have crossed swords on more than one occasion.”

“Why? Why didn’t you tell me?”

“Dido, please listen and think before you respond. Please try to put yourself in my shoes. Ok?”

“I’ll try.”

Good. The man who kept you prisoner is Thomas Fox. He is one of the top barristers in the City of London and is also a Professor of Law at the University that is close to where you have seen him. His client list is like a who’s who of organised crime in the country. He has contacts everywhere. I have been grilled by him in the witness box more than once. He is a man that is not to be trifled with.”

Dido went white in the face as she tried to take in what he’d said.

She sat looking into space for several minutes.

“I… When you told me who he was, I could have happily throttled you. Then I tried to put myself, looking at the other side of the coin as you have been telling me for ages, and I do see your dilemma. I don’t like it that you held out on me, but I understand your reasons.”

“That is progress, is it not? A while ago, the old Dido would have stormed off in a huff. You are still here, which is progress in my book.”

“If this man is who you say he is, then he is a formidable foe. I can see why being a bull in a China shop would not work.”

“Tomorrow, he is appearing at the Old Bailey in Court 12. He is defending a very nasty man who slit the throat of a competitor just for fun. Why don’t you get those clothes clean and go to the court and sit in the public gallery? Watch and learn. Then, we can talk again about how we can go about taking him down. We have a name but little else. You were held outside London. Exactly where that is is still very much a mystery. There is so much more to learn before we can even think of making a move against him.”

“We? This is my battle, John, mine and mine alone!” said a forceful Dido.

John shook his head.

“As I said, he and I have crossed swords in court. My last case was one where he defended a murderer. Our case was not as solid as it should have been. He tore three of my officers apart on the stand. Taking him down would mean that I could go to my grave a happy man. Taking him down has to be a team effort. You and me. Only when we are good and ready will we involve the authorities. We don’t know who is in the pay of criminals who might just tip him off.”

“You weren’t held prisoner for years!”

“True, but isn’t it reasonable to assume that you were not the only one he has held? He could well have someone else in the same place as you were. Don’t they deserve justice as well? Tipping him off could result in him disposing of his current captive. It is not just about you now, isn’t it?”

Dido sat thinking again.

“Ok, you win…”

“No, Dido, it is not a case of winning anything until he and all those involved in this crime are behind bad for a very long time. Given who he is, you can’t do it alone. How about it, eh?”

“Ok, but don’t ever do that again… got it?

“I won’t, but it is a two-way street, isn’t it?

“What do you suggest?”

“We have regular progress meetings. I’ll set up some whiteboards in the library that we can use to plot progress. We run this just like a proper police investigation. That way, we will have a case ready to turn over to the Police and CPS at the right time. This is not going to be a short-term task. That man is a formidable enemy. If we underestimate him, then he could fly the coup, and we won’t get justice.”

“I need to think about this.”

“I would not expect otherwise.”

Dido left John alone. He knew that he could have handled that reveal a lot better, but it was done now, and they had to move on. Fox needed to be taken down. Fox was hated by law enforcement.

In late May, Dido and John Proudfoot were having one of their regular reviews of their quest to bring Thomas Fox to justice.

Neither one was in the best of moods, mostly because very little real progress had been made since their last review. Their quarry was proving as wily as a dog fox is when it is being chased by the hounds. When it came to finding the house where he had kept Dido and probably many more young women prisoners over the years, almost zero progress was being made. It was driving Dido mad. John was by now able to read her moods, and this was one of those that needed to run its course.

Dido hadn't wanted these meetings to begin with. She had got most of the way to where the investigation was on her own and didn’t want to let John run the show. To counter her objections, John gave her a rundown on how a large-scale serious crime investigation was run, especially the role of the SIO, Senior Investigative Officer. He concentrated on how the SIO ran a case and brought in specialists like SOCO when needed. Once he'd done that, Dido was much more open with him about how she was planning to move forward once he’d given her the role of SIO with him as her assistant. She was running the show and not him.

The whereabouts of 'his' London pied-a-terre was well known to both of them. Dido had tailed him from the University in the first week of their joint investigation. His London home was a fifth-floor apartment in the Barbican Centre; it was not a place where he would be keeping another child or where Dido had been held for all those years. While finding it was a step forward, Dido knew that the place where she’d been held was in the countryside.

That small bit of information allowed them to develop a pattern of behaviour for Fox. During term time, or for most of it, he taught from Monday afternoon to Thursday afternoon. He spent three nights at his London home before heading to the country for the weekend. Dido was able to confirm his absence from the house where she had been held for around half the week.

The exception to that was when he appeared in Court as the Barrister defending some of the nastiest and most well-connected criminals in the country. His modus operandii was to try to get the trials where he was lead Barrister scheduled for the periods between terms. Dido was able to confirm that there were periods when he would abuse her just one day a week instead of the usual four days.

John tried hard to get Dido to accept that the slow and very painstaking methods of gathering information were exactly what happened in real life. Dido ignored him and spent many a Sunday watching re-runs of the Columbo TV series. John just sat back and smiled. The way Columbo went about his investigations was a million miles away from how the UK Police did their work, he would pick up on small things, both visual and verbal and would weave that into how he solved the crime. Once Dido picked up that skill, it would help the investigation a lot. John knew that it was often the small things that gave the game away, much like a poker player and their ‘tell’.

Just before Easter, Dido, John and a couple of his friends had tried to follow him, but none of their attempts were successful. All they knew was that he lived somewhere to the north and east of the capital. Once that fact had been established, all subsequent attempts at tracking him had fallen flat on their respective faces.

Every week, he would leave the University around 14:00 on Fridays and would always vary his route of exit from the capital. They had found no less than eight different paths he had used since the start of March. Every attempt to follow him to his destination had so far been unsuccessful. Much of that was down to a lack of manpower and an almost paranoid fear of being discovered. To both of them, the investigation needed to remain very much in the shadows until the time came to go public. John didn't show it, but he was worried about Dido's safety should their investigation get exposed before the right time. That was why he'd suggested to Dido very early on that she should change her appearance. So far, she'd resisted his attempts, but he was hopeful that one day she'd relent.

Both of them were clear that they were in this for the long haul, the lack of progress was troubling but not insurmountable.

One area where progress was being made was with Dido and the prospect of going back to school. It terrified her, but she knew that John was right as usual and that one day, she would have to think about what her life would be like once he had been dealt with.

The thorny issue of finding the place or places where 'he' had held Dido was one that would not go away. Dido had a large-scale map on the wall of her bedroom in the annexe that showed all the paths that he'd taken to leave London for the country. None of them went anywhere much outside the northern ring that was the North London railway line. A plethora of bus, tube and railway lines spread out beyond that ring. If you put all the tube, conventional railway and bus routes together, you have a huge web of possible interconnections.

As much as Dido hated Fox, she had to admire his ingenuity. He was certainly living up to his animal namesake.

While Dido had escaped his confines, it was of little use in the present investigation. Once she was free, she fled for her life and avoided all human contact for almost six weeks. She'd lived off of her wits and by giving the odd 'blow job' for a bit of money that was used on fast food. It was only when she had tried to steal some eggs from a suburban garden coop that she had any formal contact with officialdom. She was treated as a vulnerable young woman under eighteen. She'd been put into care with a family in the nearest town, Leighton Buzzard. Apart from that, she had little knowledge of where she'd gone since her escape.

The Police did not know about her period of captivity. She had also refused to be examined for sexual encounters.

Dido had remained with the Foster Parents for just six days. Then she walked out and took her chances on the road. It was all down to her hearing one of her social workers telling the foster father that they were going to try to find her parents or any other relatives. That had put the fear of God into her. All sorts of 'what ifs’ rampaged through her mind. She had this vision of her parents washing their hands with her all those years ago, but the spectre of 'him' coming forward as posing as her legal guardian… That was too much to risk, so she had gone on the streets. That was where she had remained until her encounter with John Proudfoot. For her, never had the apparent foolishness of appearing to try to steal a car had such a profound effect on a young life. Since that encounter, her life had changed beyond even her wildest dreams. All that remained was to get justice, and that started with the man responsible for imprisoning her for years and, in that time, made her perform horrible sex acts with him and his cabal of friends.

The words ‘All that remained’ were so easy to say but so hard to achieve. Progress was slow.

The report that John had shown her about her old life in Southend very much confirmed that vision of abandonment. Until she came of age, she was determined not to become dependent on any man and that included John Proudfoot. She trusted him… to a point. When she was legally an adult, she would review the situation.

Dido left the meeting at John’s with a lot on her mind.

It wasn’t until two days after that meeting that Dido realised that there was a solution that had been staring her right in the face all along. Her 'team' of pickpockets were masters of blending into the scenes around them. Many also had an encyclopaedic understanding of London streets that would make 'the Knowledge' that Taxi Drivers in London have to know seem like a lesson that a child would learn. One of them, who was only known as 'Janus', knew the sewer map just as well as the London A-Z road maps.

Dido made the call to John, feeling excited at finding a solution to what might have been an insurmountable problem.
“John, I know how we can follow him and not be detected.”

“It was staring me right in the face all the time. My old team of dips.”

“Yes. Their skills are perfect for this. They can blend into the background at will.”

“I have no idea where they are right now. I’ll set up a meet and put out the word.”

“I have an idea, but the meeting will not be in London.”

“I don’t want to alert the law to what we might be planning. I think that with a sizeable carrot, they will go for it.”

Dido listened to John’s thoughts on the idea.

“All they need to know is that he is a person of interest and that he is to be observed and nothing more.”

“Will they follow your orders?”

Dido chuckled to herself.
“I have more than enough dirt on them to put them away for a long time. How else do you think that I was able to keep them in line for so long? After a bit, two of the old team began to take liberties, so I made a call, and the ringleader found himself on a plane to Nigeria and an interview with a prince. They had robbed a Nigerian VIP right outside Claridge’s Hotel in broad daylight. After that… they all played ball and earned a lot of money from our little enterprise.”

“I think that they’ll play by my rules if I make it worthwhile.”

“That won’t be a problem.”

“Yes, John. I will be careful.”

Dido hung up the phone and made a mental note to get a new phone and sim ASAP. She’d had that one for three months, which was far longer than normal.

[Ten Days Later, Darling Gap Car Park, Sussex Coast.]

Dido’s motley crew of pickpockets had gathered for a meeting with her. She’d chosen the place because of a TV programme about the chalk downs. She’d never been south of London in her life. In her mind, it was far enough away to be well away from people who might recognise her or her ‘crew’. All she’d said to them was ‘get here and £500.00 will be yours’. They’d all come and hadn’t raised a question or objection. Despite their varied criminal backgrounds, they all owed Dido a lot. For well over a year, they had made a very good living from their ‘dipping’. They’d all gone off on their summer vacation with bulging pockets and zero convictions against their name. Her request for a meeting, even with a sizeable carrot, was not going to be ignored.

Dido had packed a picnic, and the group was sitting on the grass well away from where the rest of the visitors were walking, taking selfies and eating ice cream.

“Ok, Team,” said Dido.
“I want to get something straight, and what I am about to propose is optional. If you don’t want to take part, then I won’t hold it against you. You can leave with the money that I promised. You came as I asked, and I always keep my promises.”

A couple of them looked a little disappointed.
“What I want you to do is follow someone. We need to know where he goes, what he does and all without him having even the slightest idea that they are being tailed. If you do that, then each of you will get another two grand each. Are you in? If you aren’t, then as I said, I’ll give you your £500, and if I am right, there will be a bus going to Eastbourne along in twenty or so minutes. There is a direct train service from there to London Victoria every hour.”

No one moved. Dido smiled.

“Good. This person is very cunning. He should be, his name is Fox. I have a map for each of you showing the various routes he has taken to get out of London before we called off the tail. Now, with seven of you, you should be able to rotate the one following him. I have prepared some resources that will help you tail him. They are in the lockup in Kensal Rise.”

The lockup was where they held various sets of disguises and props that they used in their criminal enterprise.

Dido passed out the small package of information that she had prepared. The group was silent for several minutes as they studied them.

“Boss,” said the one woman on the team, Marsha.
“Why? Why are we following him?”

“He is a suspected rapist… of Children.”

No one argued with that. It was true, as Dido knew only too well.

“How long have we got Boss?” asked another of the group, Felix.

“He is a University Professor. The term ends in three weeks. He spends two or three nights during the week at an apartment in the Barbican, which is near the university. The starting point will be after his last tutorial, which ends at 14:00. In the meantime, I have arranged four rooms for you at two different hotels near Kings Cross. Look at the routes on the maps and work out a plan to follow him should he use them. The resources of the lockup are there for you to use.”

They were all studying the maps.
“In the lockup, there is a mobile phone for each of you. The PAYG SIM in them has two hundred minutes on it. The SIM cards were all bought from vending machines at Heathrow, so they are almost untraceable. I have loaded up the phones with all the relevant numbers. One of those new numbers is mine.”

“Except for you being on CCTV using the machines?” quipped Janus.

Dido laughed.
“Except that they were all bought by someone who looked like a Muslim woman and who was wearing a hijab. Besides, I was miles away at the time. I was panhandling outside Tower Hill Tube.”

“Janus… Do you think that the boss would make a simple mistake like that?”

“Sorry, boss.”

“No need to be sorry Janus. Mistakes are easy to make when you are working outside your comfort zone. I have learned a lot of tricks in the past couple of years, and this is just one of them.

The group enjoyed the picnic and the sea air. Dido let them travel back to London on their own. They’d agreed to meet at the lockup the next day to look over the resources and plan their course of action. I went home, hoping that this plan would work.

“I take it that no news is good news?” asked John the next Friday when he and Dido met late in the afternoon. He was in town for a Chief Superintendent’s Association Dinner.

“I’m not expecting anything until this time next week. I would hope that this week, the team has been doing reconnaissance of the routes we know that he has taken and working on a plan for how to move around dynamically. The three electric bikes that I bought from the Transport for London Lost Property auctions should help them do that.”

John looked at me curiously.
Then he shook his head.
“I won’t ask where the money came from… but…?”

Dido smiled.
“Then don’t, and you will be told no lies?”

He smiled. They were cool, but the old habits for a lifelong copper die hard, especially when Dido and money were mentioned in the same breath.

[2 weeks later]

Dido met Janus near the iconic Glasshouse in Kew Gardens. After greeting her friend, she bought lunch for them both; they found a spot to sit down where they could talk and eat at the same time. To any casual observer, they looked like friends meeting for an afternoon in the gardens.

“Ok, Janus, what is so important that you texted me in the middle of the night?”

“Boss… It is like this… We are doing it all wrong. We are following the wrong person.”

Dido smiled, but internally, she was seething with anger. She did not like being told that her plans were wrong.

“Ok, shoot. Who should we be following?”

Janus opened up his phone and showed her a photo.

Dido recognised the man. His name was Marcus. He was the son of Fox and was who ‘looked’ after those being held captive by the Professor while ‘he’ was lecturing to his students.

“This is Marcus Fox… but you know that, don’t you?”

“How… how did you get onto him? As far as I know, he does not come into the city.”

“He was at the target’s flat yesterday, taking a lot of things from it and putting them into a Volvo SUV. It was a rental if the stickers on the front windscreen are anything to go by.”

“That makes sense. He won’t be back in the city other than for a few days until September unless he is appearing for some scumbag at the Old Bailey,” remarked Dido.

“Thanks to the bikes, we were able to follow the SUV until it took the M11 at the start in Leytonstone.”

“He could have gone anywhere after that?”

“That is true, but I took the liberty of asking a neighbour of the Professor at the Barbican about the dude. She said that he had a place just south of Royston. I went up to the flat after they’d gone and knocked on his door. I made out that I was a student who had just graduated and wanted to thank him personally.”

“That was a great move, Janus, even if it was slightly risky. You are probably all over the CCTV now. If he finds out, his friends in the cops could identify you.”

“I was willing to take that risk. I saw from your body language that this was ultra important to you.”
Janus held up her hand.
“Please don’t tell me why it is so important. I don’t want to know.”

Dido smiled and nodded her head.
“This old biddy who lived next door heard me knocking. She told me that he was not expected back until late August.”

“Janus, there will be an extra bonus in this for you. At least we know where to concentrate our resources.”

“Don’t even think of it, boss. Our task is to find him. We haven’t done it yet.”

That was news to Dido and made perfect sense. Her brain was working overtime.

After leaving Janus to take the tube back into the city, Dido headed in the other direction towards the public library in Richmond.

Once in the library, she pulled out some maps of the small town of Royston. She gleaned that it was far enough out of London for his base but close enough to commute into when needed. The A1(M), A10 and M11 were within ten to fifteen minutes away by car. The town had a railway station with direct services into the heart of the city. Both the Barbican and Farringdon Stations were only a few minutes brisk walk away from the university. Suddenly, a lot of things began to make sense. She remembered nearly being run over by a car when she crossed the A1 to the west of Baldock a few days after she had escaped from his house. Those days were all about surviving and had not really penetrated her memory.

Dido left the library after an hour, feeling a lot better. Progress had been made at last.

Two days later, she met up with Janus once more. This time in Highgate Cemetery near the grave of Karl Marx.

“Janus, please tell the guys that they have done a brilliant job finding the Royston clue. I think that you all should head off to wherever for the summer. I’ll arrange for payment through the normal channels.”

“Are you sure? The boys were just starting to enjoy themselves. This makes a nice change from… well, other things.”

“But Boss? You want to take down this scumbag, don’t you?”

“I do, but by legal means.”
She stopped herself from adding, ‘ plus being locked up and abused every day like I was’.

“As I said,” said Dido in a desperate attempt to get the conversation back on track.
“I’m doing this by legal means. He needs to go to jail, and they don’t like rapists and child abusers in there.”

“What happens when you find out where he lives?”

“I investigate the property and everything. Even if I can’t get him for rape but can for something like tax evasion, then I’ll do it. I’ll just make sure that the evidence is rock solid and one million per cent legal. Whatever he goes down for is my business, ok? How I do that is with the help of a very good friend who has contacts in all sorts of pies.”

“Gotcha, boss, but just remember, we are all here for you should you need us… ok?”

“Thanks Janus. It is good to know that.”

“All our reports of how we tracked him will be in your email in the morning. Dove is collating them as we speak.”

“That’s Dove all over. Tell everyone that I’m very thankful for what you have done, and whoever thought of tracking Marcus… well, it was inspired. Thanks.”

As they said goodbye, Dido said,
“I will put envelopes in the lockup for each of you in a few days. I’m relying on you not to let anyone get clever and take more than one.”

Janus smiled.
“Gotcha Boss. You always played fair with us, and it is only fair that we do the same with you.”

Dido walked around the cemetery for over an hour after saying goodbye to Janus. While it was a strangely beautiful place, her mind was on what to do next.

Dido had not only been a pickpocket but had kept her ear open for years, even while she was being held captive. She would spend hours with her ear glued to the door of her cell, listening to ‘him’ and his friends discussing investments. She now knew that many of those discussions involved crimes. She was certain that no one knew about her eavesdropping. It would only become public knowledge when ‘he’ was in the dock or, as she knew now, shortly before it.

After she'd escaped from his prison and had gone on the streets, Dido had headed for the City of London. All she knew from hearing those conversations was that was where the big money was made. Once again, she had kept her ears open and had picked up all sorts of financial titbits, both good and bad. She had made the acquaintance of a journalist quite by chance when he'd fallen over her after a particularly drunken lunch. She began to feed him little snippets of information in return for payment.

Always uppermost on her mind was finding 'him'. Where she had been held was very much out of the city and to the north. She would travel out of central London every weekend and hope that she could catch a glimpse of him at places where people come together. Supermarkets became a favourite spot for a bit of panhandling. It was one of those trips that changed her life for the better when she met John Proudfoot.

Dipping was all well and good and could provide a steady but mostly small stream of income, whereas the big money was made in the city by people who gambled other people’s money for a living.

After a big row with John about her criminal activities, they had settled on Dido using her skills as a pickpocket to survive with one proviso: if she was arrested and later charged, then he didn’t know her and she didn’t know him. Dido had agreed with that.

While panhandling outside Tower Hill Tube at the start of her quest to identify her captor, she found a broker who would invest her cash with no questions asked other than a blowjob or two. That proved to be a very profitable partnership for both of them. The profits from those investments were in an offshore bank and were earmarked for after, hopefully, 'he' was locked up for the rest of his life or to pay for university. John’s quest to get her to come around to his way of thinking was working.

It looked like that would have to wait until after the summer. In the meantime, Dido needed to get well away from London once she had taken care of a bit of unfinished business.

Dido sent her team of ‘dips’ off for their summer break in late June. That allowed her to see how being on the ‘right’ side of the law felt.

John had been hinting that sooner or later, she was going to have to make a decision. Stop the crime and become a good citizen or… face the inevitable arrest and probable imprisonment along with the publicity about her sexuality. The mere thought of that was enough for her to see what it felt like to be a good citizen.

[A week later, Oxford Street, London]

“Nice day for a dip then, Blondie?”

Those words startled Dido. Her first reaction was to touch her hair. That was a trait that John Proudfoot had commented on several times. It annoyed her that she had done it again after vowing to stop. It was a ‘tell’ that she wanted to obliterate. She turned around feeling angry, but as soon as she saw the person standing there smiling, she relaxed.

“A good day to you, Constable Patel. As you can clearly see, I am not exactly dressed for a ‘dip’, as you put it, and my name, as you well know, is, Dido.”

Dido was well known to the local Police as a pick-pocket or, in slang terms, an artist in the ancient art of the 'dip'. Despite a huge amount of circumstantial evidence, she'd never been arrested, let alone charged with any crime. Her patch of Regent Street and Oxford Street in central London is covered by more CCTV cameras than possibly anywhere outside the area surrounding the Palace of Westminster, but none of the footage showed her putting her hand into someone's pocket and removing the contents. She was just too good to be caught like that. In recent times, she no longer did the 'dipping' herself but had trained a group of homeless misfits to work together to everyone's advantage.

This particular July Wednesday afternoon was hot and sultry. To be seen wearing a coat would immediately arouse suspicion for anyone known to be a pickpocket. Dido was wearing a very skimpy top and a short denim skirt that showed off her shapely legs. There was hardly anywhere she could hide the contents from a ‘dip’ until she could pass them off to one of her ‘team’. A small day rucksack was on her back. It contained just a bottle of water and a waterproof cagoule.

“I haven’t seen you or any of your team around this week?” asked the Constable.

“Constable Patel, if you had done your homework, you would have known that my team, as you put it, are on holiday, and that is not an admission of anything illegal, you understand? Every July and August, a good part of the country goes on holiday. My friends are no different, and before you ask, I do not have any idea where they are at the moment. It is not because I don’t want to know, but because if I don’t know, then I can’t tell people like your good self any lies now, can I?”

The constable shook his head. She always had an answer to any question that the Constable used to try to trap her. She was just too good, and that was part of the frustration of the team who covered that part of London.

“Besides, there’s a new game afoot in case you hadn’t noticed…” remarked Dido.

“What do you mean Blo… Dido? No b… lies now.”

Dido smiled.
The constable and she had known each other for almost two years. Their relationship had been combative at first. Now, it was more one of mutual respect than anything else. After several months of trying, he had reluctantly accepted that short of a miracle, he would never catch her in the act of lifting a purse or wallet.

All the local street criminals knew that Dido was on relatively good terms with a few of the police officers who patrolled this area, so her being seen passing the time of day would not be that unusual, especially given her state of dress. It was all part of the never-ending game of 'cat and mouse' that played out on the streets of central London every day.

“Have I ever, and no disrespect to your Hindu religion, bullshitted you or Detective Sergeant Harrison, whom I saw loitering with intent outside John Lewis a few minutes ago?”

The constable didn’t rise to her bait.

“If you had kept your eyes open, Constable, you would have seen that there are two new teams of ‘dip’ artists at work on this very street right under your noses. It was the chance to observe them in action that brought me here today when I could have been sunning myself on the beach in Newquay on such a fine day as this.”

“Two? Where are they?”

Dido shook her head.
“I’m going to walk away right now, Constable. It would not do to be seen talking to you for too long. Tongues will start wagging. Please ask DS Harrison to meet me at the Masons Arms up near Great Portland St tube at eight tonight. He can buy me a steak and a pint in return for the lowdown on the competition.”

The constable smiled.
“No honour amongst thieves then?”

“Not when they are going about their business tooled up to the nines, if you get my meaning?”

Her words wiped the smile off of Constable Patel’s face. One thing that made Dido and her band of dips different was that they never went ‘tooled up’. If any victim fought back, the thief would leg it rather than enter into any confrontation. If there were new ‘dips’ operating on their patch who were armed, then the game had changed for the worse.

Dido didn’t wait for a reply as she headed off towards Oxford Circus Tube. The first part of her task had been completed. She had cast the bait. All that remained was to see if the fish, or in this case, DS Harrison, would take it.

---

[That evening in the Mason's Arms Pub]

“Now Dido Pleasance… I’ve fed you and satisfied your thirst, so how about it? Who are these teams of ‘dippers’ that you mentioned to Constable Patel?”

“Thanks for the meal and the beer. They know how to serve ale here,” said Dido as she dabbed her lips with the serviette.

She smiled at the Detective. Little did he know that she was well under the legal age to be served alcohol, but she looked old enough, and he’d bought the beer for her.

Dido had been observing the Sergeant's body language since he had arrived for their meeting. She guessed that he knew nothing about the newly arrived teams of 'dippers'.

“As you clearly have no idea as to whom they are, I will start at the beginning. Towards the end of April, I started to see some scruffy individuals watching my team at work. This is no admittance of wrongdoing, you must understand.”

“You are informing me about some potential crimes. That is all.”

“Good. As I said, these scruffy individuals kept popping up at the usual hot spots. I’m sure you don’t need me to tell you where they are. That piqued my interest, so one wet afternoon in May and with nothing better to do, I followed one of the individuals. I was in disguise, by the way, so don’t bother going looking on your CCTV for me. Anyway, this person of interest disappeared into Great Titchfield St. There, he wrote down something in a notebook. Once that was done, he returned to Oxford Circus. This went on more than three times in the next two hours. Each time, he had followed a different one of my friends who were, as I am sure you are aware, going about their business. Just before six that evening, he left Oxford Circus on a No 25 bus going East. I followed him, and as he changed busses at Liverpool St, I lifted the notebook from his pocket.”

“What? You stole it?”

Dido smiled.
“I did just that. I wanted to see what he had written about what he saw going on.”

“And?”

“Fat lot of good that was. It was all written in Cyrillic.”

“Russian then?”

Dido shook her head.
“At first, that’s what I thought. I was soon put right by an acquaintance of mine, Levi Ustinov. I’m sure that he is in your files somewhere, but since he qualified as a teacher, he has gone very straight. He is now so law-abiding that he refused to translate the text for me. All that he would say was that it was mostly written in Bulgarian but with some Serbian words. After that, I took it to a Serbian exile who, in exchange for a decent sum of money, he agreed to translate it on one condition. He’s an illegal immigrant, so you can guess what that was, so I will not name him. Anyway, he translated it, and from the level of cursing and crossing that was going on while he was doing so, the contents are pretty awful. I’m sure that you can verify the translation. When I read it, frankly, it gave me the willies.”

“What does that ‘the contents are bad’ mean?”

“What it means, Sergeant, is that both your lot and mine are in for a whole new era of hurt. If you would forgive me for saying so, we that, as in people like me, never targeted locals. I’m sure that your records show that. Then, we never deliberately lifted a passport. If we did so by accident, then it would be sent or even hand-delivered to the embassy or high commission for that country. We had some honour, small as it may seem, but the evidence that you have on me would show that.”

He gave a small nod of the head in response, so Dido carried on.

“This new lot moved in and began lifting wallets almost as soon as my associates went on vacation. I’m sure that if you look at your crime reports for this month, it will show that everyone is fair game and that the level of violence on the streets has gone through the roof. The notebook shows that they know all about you and the other beat officers and your superiors. They also know about my team, but thankfully, they have little data on me. Even so, the contents of the notebook are, in my opinion, very much like the sort of data that would be needed for an invasion plan for the streets of central London. Towards the end, the book makes it clear that my friends are first to be disposed of when they return from their holidays. Their word for it was ‘eliminated’.”

“Are you having me on, Dido?”

“Sorry, Sergeant, I am being very serious. Let me give you an example of how they operate.”

The sergeant answered with a slight nod of his head.

“Earlier today, and just before I had my little chat with Constable Patel, one of their team lifted the wallet of the assistant to the Director General at the BBC. This happened outside the Starbucks store on Upper Regent Street at 12:15 today. I have photographic evidence of the crime taking place, plus it shows that the thief is carrying a large knife in such a way that leads me to be under no illusion that it would be used. I’m sure that you will be easily able to verify that... with such a well-known target.”

“Where is this notebook? Do you have it with you?”

Dido shook her head.
“Now, Sergeant… do you really think that I’d give you that? Right here in a pub?”

“What then?

“You will receive a copy of the notebook and its translation tomorrow morning by courier. Please don’t try to backtrack the messenger. You will hit a brick wall. Do I make myself clear?”

“Yes… But why?”

Dido smiled.

“Think of it this way, Detective Sergeant. I happen to know that you passed your Inspectors board more than six months ago, yet… you are still a D.S. What would get you the promotion you deserve? How about solving a string of robberies, and I don’t mean pickpocketing? I mean a very top-notch Jewellers in Bond St with everyone involved armed with AK-47s. Despite being very profitable, their pickpocketing operation is a mere sideshow. A sideshow that allows them to gather information without their true purpose being revealed. Interested?”

His body language told Dido that he was, so she continued.

“The last part of the notebook makes it clear that they are using ‘dipping’ as a way of casing several possible locations for a heist. There was another team doing the same near Bond St tube. Their exit was down Marylebone Lane and into the High Street. I watched this one for almost a week, and today, they are gone. They had moved onto what has to be the next phase of their plan whereas the Oxford Circus team were still operating.”

Dido took a sip of her beer.

“First thing this morning, all of the western team watched the Jewellers in Bond St. One by one, they walked down the street and did a loop back to the station. This was about the time when the staff were arriving for work. That leads me to assume… that they are about to rob at least one high-class jeweller on Bond St. It goes without saying that they will be armed. As I said before, I’ve seen several large knives on the ‘dippers’. The notebook talks about a delivery of ‘ten forty-seven’ from Sofia. I hope that it does not mean ten AK47’s”

'What?" said the D.S. as he filled in the blanks.

“Think of it as a parting gift, D.S. Harrison. As I told Constable Patel, I’m giving up the game. My associates are all moving on to pastures new, well away from the jurisdiction of the Met Police.”

He laughed.
“Don’t try to pull the wool over my eyes, Dido. You are far better than that.”

Dido grinned.
“As much as you might find it hard to believe, I have bigger fish to fry when I get back from a short holiday.”

The Sergeant just shook his head.

“I am working with a retired cop on a much bigger piece of very serious wrongdoing.”

“Now I know that you are lying.”

“Sorry. That is the gospel truth. I can’t divulge any more, but you have more than enough to be going on with. Foil a robbery, and that Inspector position will be yours for the taking. Who knows… there might be a few more tips coming your way in the future…”

She smiled at him. He knew that she was enjoying the encounter.
“One last thing. Here is a website address. It has a video of the man from the BBC getting his wallet lifted. Aren’t mobile phone cameras wonderful?”

She handed him a slip of paper.

“I have emailed a copy of the video to Crimestoppers, so if you want to wait a day or so, you can arrest the woman without the need to divulge the source. She is part of the Bulgarian ring. A white Transit van is used as a mobile base for their loot. There are a few shots of it at the end of the video. It has the sign saying Bayswater Builders on the side, but that could easily be changed as I’m pretty sure that it is held on with magnets.”

The sergeant sat at the table for the time it took him to drink another pint of the excellent Fullers beer. His mind was a total mess as he tried to digest at least some of what Dido had told him. Far from answering questions, his encounter with the possibly former pickpocket had caused his mind to ask a few dozen more. What irked him most was the way that she could wrap him around her little finger. Of all the informants he had worked with, she was by far the most open with her information plus, she never wanted any money for the information. All he’d ever spent was for the odd meal and a drink. All he could think of was that she had some other motive for doing what she was doing. This tip was potentially several orders of magnitude bigger than anything that she had given him before.

In his opinion, it had to be a very, very big thing for her to give up such a lucrative criminal career. This mysteriously retired officer and the case were probably nothing more than a diversion, but he’d learned a while ago that with Dido, you could never tell when she was having him on. She seemed to be perfectly serious about giving up the game, but because she was so good, it would be hard.

He downed the last of his beer with a shake of his head. He was going to have to wait until the morning before he could even begin to get any answers.

---

The promise that Dido had given him the night before was kept when, just before midday, a package arrived in the office that was addressed to him.

His good mood ended when he read the translation of the diary entries. Dido’s additional notes gave a lot of background data. She noted that there had been several smash-and-grab incidents in recent weeks. The notes in the diary clearly showed how the thieves had cased the 'joints' before carrying out the robberies. He found himself agreeing with Dido that these were nothing more than dry runs for the big day, and she’d even suggested a few named shops as the actual target.

Her notes made it clear that the two teams of pickpockets that were operating in Oxford St and the surrounding areas were being controlled by the same people even though they were only linked at the highest level. The sheer level of sophistication amazed him. The bonus was that Dido had included photos of all the ‘dippers’ and some of their middle management in the package. She had not told him about those photos the previous evening. He finished his review of the package with one overriding thought. He wished that the detectives he knew were even half as good as Dido at gathering evidence.

The DS didn’t know that was all down to the coaching that Dido had been receiving from John Proudfoot. It had taken him a while, but he was finally starting to get through to her. Dido had used this case as a trial run for the later project. To her surprise, she had found the whole process very stimulating. She was beginning to like being on the right side of the law.

“Dido, I am sorry for doubting you. I owe you!” he muttered under his breath as he prepared to take the contents of the package to the Robbery Squad at West End Central.

After some deliberation, the Sergeant decided to hold off on taking the evidence upstairs. Instead, he took a little trip along Oxford St in a No 25 bus. From the upstairs front seat, he was able to observe the foreign team at work. Dido was right about almost everything. By his third trip along Oxford St between Marble Arch and Tottenham Court Road, he saw one of the runners entering a boarded-up shop in Little Titchfield St, just as Dido had described. From his position, he was able to take a photo of the event. A White Transit van with the ‘Bayswater Builders’ sign was parked in the alley at the side of the building.

The D.S. returned to his desk in a good mood.

He sat at his desk and thought about Dido. His bus ride had confirmed her story. She'd shown more investigative prowess than most of his colleagues. It was just sad that she was on the other side of the fence. To be giving up a profitable gig for her and her team must mean that this other thing that she was doing was a lot more serious than a robbery. She had hinted about that the previous evening, and he had dismissed it outright. Now, he was not so sure.

He thought back to his first encounter with Dido and how their relationship had evolved. She was able to see things just that others could not. Her indirect help via ‘Crimestoppers’ had put away several violent offenders. It was clear to him from his latest encounter with her that she had a particular aversion to violence. He wondered if some incident early in her life had made her that way.

Little did he know how close to the truth that was.

Dido left London that day on a train bound for the Isle of Anglesey, and after a week in a ‘Yurt’, her trial run of ‘being the good guy’, so to speak, had been a great success. For the first time since that last summer in Southend, she felt at ease with life but was only too well aware of the greater challenges ahead before she could even begin to think about life after ‘him’.

Dido returned to John Proudfoot’s home after a week away. Right away, she noticed that he was frowning even more than usual.

“What’s the matter, John? You look as if you are carrying the weight of the whole world on your shoulders.”

As soon as she’d said it, Dido regretted it. That was a phrase that her mother used when talking about her father.

“Not the world, Dido, just this case. I’ve been thinking about how to find the ‘Foxes Lair’.”

“So have I,” said Dido in a matter-of-fact way.

“Then you can prepare dinner while you work out how you are going to present your fiendishly cunning plan to me as if you are the SIO on the case.”

Dido didn’t react to his taunt. She had come up with all sorts of plans to find him in the past, and rightly so, John had shot them all down in flames as being unworkable.

“Ok, ok. I guess I deserve that.”

Dido went into the kitchen and found all the ingredients for dinner sitting on the worktop. She wasn’t surprised. This was his way of working.

She began to prepare the vegetables after switching on the small wall-mounted TV. She'd read a discarded copy of that morning's 'Metro' on the tube after she’d returned to the capital from Anglesey. Buried deep on page four was a brief piece about an attempted robbery from a shop on Bond St. She was hoping that the local TV news would shed some more light on it.

As she’d hoped, it was the lead item on the London news. She was so engrossed in it that she failed to notice John leaning against the door from the hallway into the kitchen.

“Did you have something to do with that?”

Dido almost jumped out of her skin.

“John… I didn’t see you there?”

“Well? Did you? I could not help noticing how you almost sliced a bit off your finger when the words ‘multiple arrests’ were said.”

Dido smiled.
“I might have told someone about the people who may have tried to commit this robbery.”

“Then I’m proud of you.”

John came into the kitchen and took the knife from Dido.
“Why don’t you tell Uncle John all about how you have gone away from the dark side?”

“Dark Side? Dipping is hardly the dark side, is it?”

“It is still a crime, isn’t it?”

“Hardly on the same scale as a jewellery heist armed with some serious weaponry, is it…?”

“Granted. What did you do?”

“I only used the skills that you taught me. Observing people and watching what they do.”

“That’s only part of it. What else did you do?”

Dido looked at the floor for several seconds. Then she said,
“Ok, I lifted a diary from one of the team leaders. It was written in Serbian and Bulgarian. I got it translated, and it outlined the plan. Plus, I took a video of one of them lifting a wallet inside Starbucks on Upper Regent Street. I put it all in a package and gave it to a DS.”

John finished chopping the veggies with a huge smile on his face.
“How did that feel?”

“Good. Is that wrong?”

“No, my dear, it is not wrong. What you experienced is what most police officers work for years and never get to experience. Being part of a team takes a lot of the personal adrenaline rush away.”

“You don’t mind me going behind your back like that?”

“Dido… Dido… You are becoming your own person. You have developed some contacts of your own inside the police. I guess that DS owes you a favour or three for the information you passed on to him. If so, then use it wisely. It isn’t a get out of jail free card.”

Dido didn’t answer because she was looking at the TV. She smiled when she saw the person from the Police speaking to the camera.

“Is that your DS?” asked John.

“Yes, but he’s now in line to be a DI.”

“I’m guessing that you had something to do with that?”

“And why not? He played ball with me in return for a few tips about some other crimes. He’s one of the good guys.”

“How do you know that? What if he is now in Fox’s clutches?”

“He knows nothing about my past. All he knows is that I’m a street dipper with a keen eye when it comes to observing people doing wrong.”

“With a South East Essex accent. I’m just saying, be careful who you trust when it comes to cops. You told me that you were made to sexually service several high-ranking officers of the Met Police. If they are that corrupt, then who knows who else they have their own sticky fingers into?”

“Message understood, but John, I just got that good feeling when dealing with him. He never even propositioned me.”

“I get that, but please, Dido, be careful.”

“I took precautions just like you told me to. I sent all the details to Crimestoppers, and he held off for them to pass it all on.”

“You are learning, but…?”

“Be careful.”

“Good. Now get the pasta on to boil while I make the sauce and grill the bacon.”

“Yes, Daddy.”

John's words about being careful did resonate with Dido. Going off mission as she had done seemed like a good idea at the time, but what John had said about being spotted was right. They could trust no one until they had so much evidence that even the most corrupt cop and CPS lawyer could not ignore it.

The days of walking around Anglesey seemed such a long time ago. She’d spent much of the time working out what she should do for the future. Going back into some form of education was a huge step for her and incredibly daunting. John had been dropping hints for a long time, and she’d ignored them, but a TV documentary about criminal re-offending rates had struck a note with her. The lack of education was cited as a major reason for the problem. It scared her witless. From just being able to survive on the streets to, if John had his way, getting a degree was hard to imagine.

School had not been a pleasant time for the old ‘him’. The lessons had been incredibly boring. Without really thinking about the work, he’d received top marks for all his homework. Because of the boring nature of the lessons, the old him had bunked off school, which had gotten him into trouble with the school and his parents. They’d even threatened to suspend him then… the shit hit the fan, and his old life ended. ‘He’ was no longer on this earth and had been replaced by Dido. Her life was as Dido, and while ‘he’ would always be there in the background, she could only afford to think about herself and her future.

The upside was that she’d proved to John that she was a good learner. She’d mastered picking front door locks in a matter of days. While that wasn’t anything like learning sums, science and everything else, it proved to her that if she was sufficiently interested in a topic, she would stick at it and learn it inside out, backwards and forwards. She’d done it with the sort of locks that people have on their front doors. Now, picking them was easy, and she’d even done it blindfolded. He’d raised the stakes and included combination locks similar to ones used in safes. She’d mastered the technique of listening for the tumblers to drop in less than a week.

The prospect of having to deal with fools and idiots at college did not appeal to Dido. Her intolerance of others was in her mind down to Fox and friends. They had demanded instant obedience when they came into the cellar. Any protestation or delay would result in punishment. Dido knew that she would have to learn to tolerate idiots and even those who didn’t want to learn if she was to get anywhere towards building a career for the time after Fox had been sent away for more years than he had left on the planet.

She had made the final decision to return to some form of education while she watched the vehicles cross over the famous tubular bridge that connected the island with the mainland. Dido wondered why Telford had chosen a square metal tube for a bridge. After a shudder when, she realised that it was a bit of her old male self coming to the surface. Thomas had been into building structures with Lego before…

Then she smiled and wondered if that wasn’t so bad after all. That clinched it. Dido was going back to school. His enquiring mind was right there in Dido.

Dido didn’t tell John about her decision to return to some form of education on that visit to his home. She had some more research to do first. Little things such as courses, venues and, importantly, the cost.

She even took a trip to Royston and spent a day going through the electoral register for the district for anyone named 'Fox'. There were three, but after cross-referencing their addresses to a map, they were discounted. At least that was one thing less to check in the future. It wasn't until she was on the train to Cambridge that she thought about the risk of being discovered. That was when she made the other decision: she needed to get her face fixed once and for all.

When she arrived at John’s home, he came out to greet her. He knew that something was up from the way that she purposely strode up the drive to the house.

“I wasn’t expecting you today, but I get the feeling that you have something to tell me?”

Dido shook her head. He could read her like a book.

“I do… Two things.”

“Good. Let’s go inside. I have a bottle of wine open.”

“John?”

He grinned.
“Your lack of awareness tells me that you forgot that it was your 18th birthday yesterday.”

For a moment, Dido wanted to kick something. She had been so focused on other things she had forgotten that she was now old enough to vote, get married without parental permission and buy a drink in a pub.

“I… I forgot.”

“Then let’s go inside out of this heat, and we can toast your coming of age.”

Once they’d toasted Dido’s birthday, John sat and waited for Dido to divulge what she had decided. After a bit of hesitation, she said,

“You win.”

“I didn’t think that we were at war,” replied John without even thinking.

“Not at war, but you were right about… well, everything.”

He shook his head.
“No, Dido. I’m never completely right about anything. I merely provide guidance and suggestions, as you well know. What suggestions of mine are you talking about?”

Dido shook her head and mentally kicked herself for starting their conversation in the way that she had done.

“I’m going to get my face fixed. I was silly… no, make that stupid. I went to Royston to look through the electoral roll without thinking.”

“That wasn’t advisable, but what’s done is done. Did you find them?”

She shook her head.
“Not a trace.”

“Then that indicates that the property they live in is owned by a company. Councils are less proactive about getting people on the electoral roll if a home is a company place where staff may come and go at regular intervals.”

“That’s something, isn’t it?”

“A small step but a step forward nevertheless.”

Dido didn’t say anything.

“I’ll give you the contact information of the plastic surgeon. Then, it is up to you to decide what you have done.”

“Only if I can afford it. The sort of things that I need cost lots of cash.”

“Just do what makes you safe from being recognised by Fox.”

“And?” asked John after a pause.

“I’m going to school. Not sure when or where yet, but I’m going to at least try to get enough learning so that I don’t appear like a total dork when applying for jobs and stuff.”

“That’s a good plan.”

Dido shook her head.
“Cut the crap, John. You have indicated more than once that you have a plan for me. Why not let me in on it, and we can evolve it from there?”

John sat back with a smile on his face. He poured them both another glass of wine.

“Not here, not today,” he said in a serious tone.

Dido didn’t look that happy,
“Meet me outside Surrey Keys Overground Station at midday tomorrow, and I’ll explain everything,” said John with a little smirk on his face.

She glared at John. Her grand plan of dealing with both issues in one visit had fallen flat on its face.

[the next day – Surrey Keys, SE London.]

John was waiting for Dido outside the London Overground station. Traffic zoomed past him as he waited. The smell of unburnt diesel fuel lingered in the air long after a very decrepit Transit van had disappeared towards New Cross. This was part of modern London that he didn’t miss.

He was so self-engrossed that he missed Dido arriving by bus. She tapped him on the shoulder. John nearly jumped out of his skin with surprise until he saw who it was.

“You were miles away,” said Dido.

“I was, but…?”

“I came by bus.”

“Oh. Then we had better get on with business, hadn’t we?”

“Business? What is there in this decrepit part of London?”

“It isn’t all like this. We are heading over towards the river. There are a lot of apartments there where once there were old warehouses. Greenland Dock, as its name implies, dealt with the Arctic Fur Trade decades ago.”

Dido followed John past the fairly decrepit shopping centre and supermarket into a much nicer area. The hum of traffic died away, only to be overtaken by the sound of a plane taking off from the nearby London City Airport.

"Here we are," said John as they reached the path that runs along the river. Several runners were pounding the pavement during their lunch break.

“The river bus stop is just there. It can take you to Westminster Pier in about half an hour,” he said, pointing at a floating jetty that stuck out into the river.

Dido had never been to this part of the city before. The towers of the docklands' financial area were just across the water.

“Come on, I have something to show you,” said John as he walked up to the door of a building.

He led Dido up to the 4th floor and opened a door to one of the apartments.
“Come on in and take a look around.”

The view down the river towards the Millennium Dome was magnificent.

“What is this place?”

“You need a place close to places of learning. Why not this one?”

“I could never afford a place like this.”

“Then don’t. Dorothy and I bought this place and the one next door as somewhere to rent out for a steady income during our retirement. We’d just completed on the purchase when she was diagnosed with cancer. Since then, I have not had the heart in me to rent them out. Too many memories.”

“I still could not afford the rent.”

John opened his briefcase, pulled out a document, and put it on the kitchen counter.

“This is a document that transfers the ownership of this apartment into a trust. In seven years, it will be yours free and clear.”

“John… Be honest with me for once. No one in their right mind gives away a place like this. What is it worth? Half a mil? There has to be a catch. Didn’t you tell me about things that seem too good to be true are probably full of shit?”

John chuckled.
“I did warn you off of gift horses. But Dido… you are, as I have said many times, the daughter I never had. I had this document drawn up more than a year ago, but my lawyer told me that you could not sign it until you were eighteen. You are now old enough, so have a read and tell me what you think.”

Dido shook her head but picked up the document. It was only two pages, and John had insisted that the legalese was kept to a minimum.

“Why seven years?”

“Tax. To give someone a gift of this size, the person giving it has to live for seven years after the gift for it to be considered free of Income Tax. By putting it into a trust, I can die, but the property is kept in my estate until the seven-year period runs out. You can’t sell the property until you obtain ownership of it, but the trust deed gives you free rent of the property for the entire seven years. This would be your base while you continue with your task of bringing Fox to heel.”

“But… seven years?”

“Think of it this way: year one, crash courses in English, Maths and Sociology and one science. Then, two years for A-Levels followed by a 3 or 4-year degree course. That plan does not preclude bringing Fox to justice in the intervening period should we get the evidence we need to call in the Police.”

“But it is farther from Royston than your place?”

John smiled.
“When the time comes to do detailed searching in that area, then my home will be a perfect base, but now you need to think about your education and how you can out-fox Fox when it is your turn to give evidence against him.”

“What if I fail those A-Levels?”

“You resit them and try again. I failed my Inspectors exam twice before passing. It wasn’t the end of the world. All the time you are studying, you are learning about people and interacting with them. You missed out on so much being locked up by him. I think that you know that you are pretty awkward when it comes to being sociable with people you don’t know and trust. Time will help you improve those skills.”

Dido went and looked out of the window at the river below them. For almost the first time since she escaped from her prison, she was crying. These were tears of joy.

“John…” muttered Dido.

“Why would you do all this for me?” she added, wiping away some tears from her cheek.

John resisted, sighing. Instead, he gave Dido one of his handkerchiefs.

“What else am I going to do with my money? I certainly don’t want to give it to my cousin Frank, who is a serial loser. Give him a hundred quid in the morning; he will have lost it all on the horses and slots within a couple of hours. He has no sense of the value of money. I’ve told you before that you are the daughter that Dorothy and I were unable to have.”

Dido managed a nod of the head.

“Besides, it is not as if I’m turning you loose the day after your eighteenth birthday with five hundred grand now, am I?”

Dido shook her head. She was still trying to come to terms with his generosity.

“Good. Then sign the document, and the clock will start ticking.”

John’s voice echoed around the empty apartment.

“There are two bedrooms. One can become the ‘War Room’ on our quest for Fox.”

“But… Won’t the next part of the search be up in Royston?”

“That’s only part of the story, isn’t it? You have your studies. If you look at the date on the document, you will see that I had it put together before we knew who had kept you prisoner for all those years. With the Overground, the Jubilee Line and the River Bus, isn’t this a good place to have a base?”

“I know, but…”

“Dido. Stop right there. You are not unclean. You are not a loser. You have shown a determination to bring the man who wronged you deeply to justice that would faze almost everyone else I have ever met. I did meet and get to know a lot of victims over the thirty-odd years that I was on the job. Dido, you show a determination that none of the other victims ever came close to. I am confident that you will get the redress that you so justly deserve.”

“Thank you, John. I… I just didn’t expect any of this.”

“Don’t thank me until you have a degree and Fox is sent down for the rest of his natural life.”

Dido smiled back at her mentor. They were cool.

She proved that by giving him a hug followed by a light kiss on the cheek.

John showed Dido the various facilities in the apartment. She just nodded her head. It was more than she had even hoped for at some point in the distant future.

“All of this comes with some strings,” he said when the tour was over.

“Ok, John, shoot!”

He chuckled at Dido’s use of language.

“I have set up an account that will pay the council tax and management fee automatically for the period of the trust deed. If… If you do have someone share it, you will need to inform the council. As a single person, you get a 25% reduction in council tax. There is enough money in the account to cater for the loss of that reduction. I have put enough extra cash in the account to cope with a 5% increase in the council tax every year. Are you with me so far?”

“I think so. This is all new to me.”

“That’s why I’m trying to make things easy for you.”

John handed over a set of keys.
“These are the keys to the place, plus there is a key to a storage unit in Deptford. Dorothy bought a lot of used but serviceable furniture at charity shops in preparation for us renting this out as a furnished flat. It has been there ever since. Choose what you want from it, and it is yours.”

“But… how will I get it here?”

John smiled.
“That’s the next string.”

He pulled out a flyer from his briefcase and handed it to Dido.

Her eyes bulged. The flyer described a ‘pass your driving test in a week’ course.

“Consider that your birthday present from me.”

Dido smiled.
“Does that mean I can drive the Cortina?”

“There is zero chance of that, my dear, but I’m buying a new car. You can drive that when it arrives.”

“But I don’t have a license?”

John nodded.
“That’s the final string. You have to go legit. Now that you are eighteen, you can legally change your name, get a bank account without a parent being a guarantor and…”

He grinned.
“Pay Income Tax.”

“Me? Pay Tax?”

“Ok, perhaps not at first, but there will come a time when you will. The sooner you become a legal person with an identity, the less hassle it will be later. Then comes the downside of being legally an adult. If you are arrested and convicted, you will not be sent to a young offenders’ institution. Having a criminal record as an adult can jeopardise any future employment prospects. More and more employers are performing criminal record checks… especially those in the legal profession.”

Dido shook her head.

“What’s wrong?”

“It is all a bit much.”

“That, my dear Dido, is what being an adult is all about. Things are harder when you are of age than when you had people making decisions, be they right or wrong on your behalf.”

She looked out of the window once more. A river bus was slowing down for the nearby stop. Three people were waiting to board. It all seemed a bit surreal to her.

“Thank you, John. I will try to live up to your expectations.”

“All I hope for Dido is that you do your best and don’t forget where I am, ok?”

She turned and stuck her tongue out at him.

John nodded his head and smiled. Dido was growing up fast. She had come a long way since the day that she had tried to steal his beloved Cortina.

[End of Book 1]
Book 2 will begin to be posted in the new year.

[Authors Note]
If you liked the seven parts that I have posted so far, please take the time to comment on the story so far and where you think it will go in Book 2.

Three years have passed since Dido turned eighteen and was therefore legally able to make decisions about her life for herself. In the interim, she had enough cosmetic surgery done on her face to make her look quite different from the sixteen-year-old who had tried to break into John's lovingly restored Ford Cortina. With John’s help, she’d become a legal person with all the responsibilities that came with being a citizen. She had even voted in an election.

Her home in South East London gave her a place where she could put down roots. Thanks to a trip to a careers event being held at the local library, she learned that she could start learning at a nearby college.

John giving her the flat via a trust for seven years that would avoid any tax liability was all a bit much for Dido to fully understand at first. After taking the document that John had given her to a solicitor, she began to understand what John was going on about. Dido still found it hard to grasp just how generous he was, but she knew that she was very lucky to have tried to break into his car when she did. She had seen other homeless people come and go in her time on the streets. It wasn’t that uncommon for the Police to come around asking if they knew one of their fellow street people who had met a sticky end. Meeting John had probably saved her life, but she would never say that to anyone other than him.

Dido returned to school that September as a part-timer at a Sixth Form College that offered lower-level subjects for those who had missed vital parts of their education. Most of her fellow students were immigrants and even a couple of asylum seekers, but they all wanted to learn. After initially struggling with the discipline needed to attend classes, she began to apply the same level of determination to the subjects as she had done to identifying her captors as Professor Jonathan Fox, QC and his son Marcus.

John Proudfoot was always there for her in the background, but now that she had something to focus on his role was more of a provider of moral support and the odd Sunday Roast than a major player in her quest to bring Fox to justice for the time being. She never stopped looking into his past, but as John had made it clear very early on, this was a marathon and not a sprint.

She stuck it out and passed her end-of-year exams with flying colours. The smile on her face when she learned her results would have lit up a town. She finally had proof that she could do things on her own and, importantly, succeed. Fox would always tell her that she was unclean before he raped her. Passing her exams was proof to her that she wasn’t unclean and a loser.

Armed with a top-grade O-level in Maths and English Literature, Dido went full-time at the sixth-form college the following September. Despite being older than most of her compatriots, she signed up to take A-levels in Psychology, Law and Sociology. Two long and sometimes difficult years later, she passed all three with top 'A*' grades. Once again, she'd proved to the world that she was not a loser and that no one would even give you the time of day.

The time spent at college provided plenty of time for Dido to learn about socialising with her fellow students, although her ideas about music, fashion and almost everything else were very different from her fellow students. She blamed the lost years for that, but to their derision, she developed a love for classical music and each year, she often frequented the BBC Proms events that were held at the Royal Albert Hall. She even dragged John Proudfoot to a few events, but his musical tastes were more ‘Prog Rock’ than ‘Classical’. For her, listening to classical music enabled her to immerse herself in the sounds and especially the melody, something that was impossible with most modern stuff.

In the spring of her second year, she applied for a place on the Criminology Degree course at the London University, where Professor Fox taught law. If her application was successful, then eventually, it would involve being in the same room as 'him' for lectures and tutorials. That would be a great test for her strength of character, given her history with him in the past. Dido had spent a lot of time with her counsellor talking about how she should handle the first encounters with the man who had abused her so badly for so long.

She had seen him in action at least a dozen times, either at the Old Bailey or Southwark Crown Court. John’s description of him was very true. Any doubts that she might have had were soon dispelled by the absolute mauling that he gave the Detective Chief Inspector who had arrested his client. It was as if an all-out war had been declared between Fox and the officer. No quarter was given until the judge stepped in and stopped Fox from defaming the witness any further. However, even the threat of a contempt charge plus a civil lawsuit didn't really stop the tirade from Fox. He carried on but with slightly less barb to his comments. Eventually, coming face to face with him in court was some way off, but it would happen. She was under no illusion about the task ahead, and for that, she would have to rely a lot more on John for help, as he had faced Fox in court a few times before he retired.

Her initial reaction to the task ahead was one of despair and hopelessness. It took a lot of gentle persuasion by John Proudfoot to bring Dido around. Gradually, she began to see the wisdom of his words, especially when he said 'Be Prepared'. While this is the motto of the Scout movement, Dido began to see that if she was prepared for her day in court, and for Fox to employ tactics like those that she had witnessed, she could outfox Fox. It was John who said, 'he is a bully and bullies do not like not getting their way'. Dido could readily identify with that statement from her time as his captor. Her mission was to learn from him how he prepared for and operated in court. When it was time for her to face him in court, then she’d have countermeasures to all the tricks he regularly employed to denigrate witnesses.

The story resumes with Dido taking a short holiday before becoming a full-time university student.

---

[10th September, outside Montmartre Metro Station]
Dido visited Paris at the end of summer for a week of 'being a tourist' before starting life as a 'proper' student. Most of the time, she was just that, a tourist, but one that was armed with a Credit Card scanner. She visited all the usual tourist locations with nothing more than a small backpack on her back and a small 'bum bag' for her phone and some small change.

The scanner used some wizard technology to syphon card details from those who didn’t take precautions such as using a wallet or a purse that blocked NFC access. Once a card or cards were scanned, the details were sent securely to her partner in Appledorn in the Netherlands, without her even having to break stride thanks to the tiny box of tricks that sat in a false compartment at the bottom of the backpack. If anyone examined it, it would appear to be nothing more than an iPod. It was actually a Classic iPod, but with some very special enhancements that only an expert in Apple technology could detect. It even played music if it had to.

Once the details had been received in Appledorn, a small sum of money was transferred into her offshore bank in Panama. A week in Paris and those small sums had netted her close to £31,000, but even so, it had not been without some risk. Almost from the outset, she had come to the notice of the French Police who had warned her off from attempting any ‘dipping’ on their patch.

“Mademoiselle, we know all about you and your habit of picking pockets,” said the Police Officer who had stopped her as she emerged from the station.

Dido had merely smiled back at them and said in perfect French…

“I am here on holiday and not to work. If you want to search me, then please go ahead. Please tell me where exactly I could stash anything that I steal from someone?”

Dido was right. She'd worn a series of sleeveless dresses all week. The tight-fitting nature of her clothes meant that there was nowhere she could hide any 'loot'.

They had declined her invitation and had allowed Dido to go for the time being. She smiled at them and left.

Now that the Gendarmerie had made contact with her, Dido was determined to lead them on a wild goose chase just for fun. It was hard for her not to lift any purses or wallets. There were plenty of targets now that the Parisiennes were returning from their summer vacations, but Dido had promised herself that she would let the electronics do the ‘lifting’ until it was time for her to return home in a few days besides, she was enjoying just being a tourist. A trip to the top of the Eiffel Tower had been her most profitable ‘tourist hot spot’. It had netted her close to £4,000. A day trip to Versailles was almost as profitable but the star performer was a day at the races. People with money were everywhere. Her electronic dipping earned her more than £7,500.

She enjoyed the Louvre apart from the queue to see the Mona Lisa. On the way back to her hotel, she was approached by someone who was vaguely familiar to her but she could not place the face at the time.

The man who was much older than Dido and accompanied by a very attractive and much younger woman, gave Dido some information.

“Just phone it into Crimestoppers when you get back,” he said.

“Just remember that these people are tooled up.”

It was only later that Dido was able to put a name to a face. The man was like she had been, a street criminal. His patch was around the Tower of London. Dido had seen him when panhandling near Tower Hill tube station.

She was perplexed about why he'd picked her out of the crowd of other tourists using the Metro Station. By then, it was too late, and the man and his companion were long gone. After a bit of reflection, Dido knew that his unrehearsed speech meant that it was done on the spur of the moment. A chance encounter with someone from both their pasts.

Dido travelled home via the city of Lille. At a café near the station, she returned the card sniffer to her friend from Appledorn, before catching the next London-bound Eurostar.

[17th September, St Pancras International Station]

Dido returned to London very pleased with her week's work, only to find that as soon as she had cleared customs and immigration at St Pancras Station, two plainclothes police officers were waiting for her.

“Back from your Paris crime spree, I see?” said one.

“But why did you not use the direct service?”

This officer was well known to Dido. Detective Inspector Guy Morton had arrested her several times since she’d arrived in the capital as a homeless urchin with a skill of lifting wallets and purses. None of the charges he’d levied at her had stuck. Dido was always able to get out of any charges without ever going before the courts. She was just too smart for that.

“Nice to see you Detective Inspector. Who is your sidekick? I don’t believe that we have met before?”

Dido ignored the question about her journey home. It was none of his business.

“This is Detective Constable Alice Fisher. She is on my team.”

“Always good to know about the opposition!” joked Dido.

The DI saw the funny side, but the DC just glared at her.

“We hear that you gave the French Police the run-around?”
Dido grinned.

“Nothing like a little game of cat and mouse to liven things up. To tell the truth, those numpties are nowhere near as good as you lot.”

She looked at the DC.

“That is a compliment in case you hadn’t noticed.”

“Was it profitable then? Your trip that is?” asked the DC.

“Not really. I enjoyed myself, but I’m out of pocket, but making money was not the purpose of my visit. I wanted to see the sights of the city before I settle down to life as a student.”

“We heard about your ruse of becoming a student. That won’t wash with us you know?”

Dido grinned.
“You could enrol the DC here on the course just to keep tabs on me. I think that the Police perspective would liven up our tutorials a good deal once it became known that you were a representative of the ‘filth’. I use that word because I have heard many law and criminology students from the esteemed institution that I will be attending use it. To me, you are just the opposition who are there to be beaten or on the odd occasion, helped along your long and winding road towards solving real crimes. Besides, it would broaden her understanding of the law and criminal behaviour.”

Neither of the officers rose to her taunt.

“Just why did you go to Paris if you weren’t going to lift a few purses and wallets? I don’t believe that you were a tourist.” asked the DI.
Dido grinned.

“I was just that, a tourist. Oh, believe me, Inspector, it was hard. The temptation to life a few wallets was all around me and yes, people were doing just that, but this time I had nothing to do with any of it. The Gendarmerie had a tail on me for all but the last two days. I’m sure that they will verify that I committed zero crimes during my visit.”

“Don’t give me that load of cock and bull Dido. Dipping has been your life since you came to London. Going to university costs money? Where is that coming from if not from your criminal activities?”

“Alleged criminal activities to be exact, Detective Inspector.”

Her comment didn’t seem to register with the DCI so she carried on.

“I’m not admitting to anything but to be accurate Detective Inspector, it was almost six years ago that our paths crossed for the first time. I’ve changed, so have you. We all are different people from what we were five or six years ago. Besides, you lot all know me by sight, and guess who is the first one to be hauled off to the nick if anyone reports some light-fingered-blonde chick nicking their things. As I said Detective Inspector, I am done with dipping. That is not a confession by the way. This is all hypothetical.”

Neither of the officers said anything in response so Dido did it for them.

“If there is nothing else then I’ll bid you good day.”

She picked up the handle of her wheeled suitcase and started to walk away. She’d gone about three steps before she came back to where the officers were standing.

“Detective Constable… please give me your notebook. I’m going to give you a tip.”

“Detective Constable,” retorted the DC. She looked at her boss.

“Please give Dido your notebook. This will be a first for her. Helping the Police? Wonders will never cease.”

Dido shook her head.
“I just said that from time to time, I may give you lot a bit of information. In this case, I’m just letting you know who knifed Joe Tapper. They will do it again.”

The crime had happened while Dido was in Paris.

“How do you know all this?” asked Constable Fisher.

Dido just tapped the side of her nose.
The now late, Joe Tapper was another well-known 'dipper'. He never worked alone and his usual patch was around Trafalgar Square and the National Gallery. He was a perfect gentleman and dressed the part right down to the cravat, silk handkerchief in his jacket pocket, a half-hunter-watch on a gold chain and a bowler hat. Tourists would line up to take photos of him. While they were busy with that, one of his associates did the dip. That was how he'd lasted for more than thirty years in the game.

Dido wrote down an address and returned the notebook to the DC.

“If you follow up on this you’d better go in armed. According to my informant, the people who live in the squat are well-armed and not just with knives. That’s why I’m giving you this tip. The likes of Joe would never go dipping carrying anything remotely illegal if you follow my meaning.”

“What do you want in return for this… If by some freak of nature, it works out that is?” asked the DI.
Dido smiled.

“Just remember that you owe me one. Conspiring to top someone and then actually doing it, is a different ballgame to dipping, isn’t it? According to my source, he ‘dipped’ the pocket of one of their crew outside the National Gallery, and lifted close to a grand in notes. That money was from a drug deal so they went hunting for their pound of flesh.”

She flicked back her blonde locks and strode off in the direction of the Underground with a smile on her face.

“How was your trip back from Paris?” asked her long-time friend John Proudfoot when Dido arrived at his home in Epping the next day.

“Good. No, make that very good indeed.”

“Why?”

“I was met by DI Morton outside Immigration. He had this new sidekick with him, DC Alice Fisher.”

“The DI I know. He and I have crossed paths a few times in the past. The DC is a new one to me.”

“From her accent, I’d say that she is a Mancunian or from somewhere close by, probably Salford.”

“Good looking?”

“Not bad but remember John, you are old enough to be her grandfather.”

“So?” said a smiling John. Dido knew that he was joking.

“What did they want?”

“They wanted to congratulate me on giving the Parisienne Plod the run around all week.”

“That was the plan, wasn’t it?”

“It was but they didn’t believe me when I said that I’m done ‘dipping’ so I left them with a little tip about Joe Tapper.”

The smile that was on John’s face disappeared in a flash.

“What did you do?”

“I told them where the people behind the attack on Joe Tapper hang out and also that they are armed. That’s all.”

“That’s all? Are you mad?”

“Joe didn’t deserve what happened to him. He and I might have crossed swords from time to time, but to have three fingers amputated like that is beyond the pale. They sent a message all right. That was amplified by killing him as soon as he got out of St Thomas’s and throwing his body into the river. This mob might be from Brum, but they ain’t no ‘Peaky Blinder’s’ if you get my meaning.”

“What if they find out that it was you that dobbed them in?”

“They won’t find me in my old haunts now, will they? Besides, I have not observed them and have not been anywhere near their base. I was just passing on a tip from someone I met on the Metro.”

“Are you saying that you just happened to run into a crook from London in Paris? Pull the other one.”

“It was almost by accident. We’d both been to the Louvre and met on the platform at the nearest Metro station. If anything, they wanted someone with some credit with the Plod here in London, to pass this information on. Don’t ask who they are or where they are but if I were a betting woman, I’d say that the attractive German brunette who spoke very little English that he had with him would be a sign that they are retiring, and won’t be back to London any time soon. I won’t name names but this man was a well-known conman who operated out of hotels like the Ritz, Savoy or the hotels near the Tower of London which is where I first saw him as he made a rapid exit from one of those hotels.

“But Dido!”

The look that Dido gave John told him to shut the hell up. There was no going back.

“Ready for your lesson tomorrow?” asked John.

“Yeah.”

“Did you look at the directory of safe models that I gave you?”

“Yeah. Complicated is an understatement. How can you know all this stuff?”

“I didn’t. I don’t know it all now. You need to know the major types by sight and then how to remember key points so that you can swot up on them later if it is a new model. Preparation is key remember.”

“I know. You don’t know how hard it was to get ready each day and go out into the crowds and not lift anything. Believe me, there were plenty of opportunities but every time I was tempted to do the dirty deed, I stopped myself. I also made sure that I didn’t have anywhere to hide the loot or a team to pass the objects off to.”

“But you managed it didn’t you?”

Dido smiled.

“I did. I’m not saying that I’m cured of wanting to lift the odd wallet or two, but for the moment I’m ok. Your idea worked… for the time being.”

Dido laughed.

“What is so funny?” asked John.

“I nearly fell into the ‘Fagin Trap’.”

It was John’s turn to laugh. He’d coined the term ‘Fagin Trap’ because of the lyrics to ‘You gotta pick a pocket or two’ from the musical ‘Oliver’.
“It appears that a little of my cautionary teaching has sunk in?”

“You know bloody too well that it has.”

“Good. Then you should read up on Dudley Safes tonight and I’ll test you tomorrow. It will be good practice for you for your course.”
Dido smiled back at John hoping that she wasn’t letting on that she’d spent most of the previous night going over the technical specs of all the Dudley safes that had been made in the last 20 years.

As Dido prepared for bed, she wondered how many of the class she was about to join had a retired Chief Super in their corner or who could pick a lock blindfolded. 'Not many', she muttered to herself.

[University – The first day of term]
Dido felt very nervous as she along with dozens more students, as they assembled for their first lecture. The lecture theatre was packed and to make matters worse, it was not yet 10:00, but three other students had already tried out their chat-up lines on her. This was both a compliment and an insult to her. The three of them were in her eyes, still wet behind the ears. Straight out of school and un-streetwise, besides, she wasn't interested in people who were several years younger than her and their conversations were mostly about some internet non-entity who had become an 'influencer' or something like that.

She kept her distance from those conversations until she knew more about her fellow classmates. Instead, she basked in the knowledge that she had already come a long way in her quest to bring Fox and his evil friends to justice.

Those nearest her were talking about social media. One boasted that she was an influencer. She’d never heard that name before so she listened in a bit more attentively but the conversation got so overloaded with other terms, she tuned out.

While Dido did maintain a presence on the various Social Media Platforms, that presence was very low-key. She wanted to silently broadcast loud and clear, 'Dido Pleasance she was there to learn' and unlike most of those around her, she had a definite goal in sight. Several of her fellow students were lamenting that they were only there because they failed to get the grades to get on the Law Degree course. She wondered if that lack of positivity might come and bite them in the backside when it came to exam time.

So far it seemed that the other students hadn't grasped the fact that she was at least three years older than them but it was early days. If that made her stand out from the crowd, then that was good but still strange. After years of striving to blend in with the crowds, being a student was her chance to shine, but within reason. Her years on the street in and around the seedier side of society were her secret weapon. John Proudfoot had told her many times that her experiences on the street and her brushes with the law would help her out, but he’d warned her not to boast about it. His words for revealing her past life was ‘less is more. The less that you reveal the better’.

She’d rebelled at the idea for a bit, but gradually, his words started to make sense. Play it cool and low-key while learning all she could about Fox.

Dido had eavesdropped on a couple of conversations among her fellow students. They were comparing the various Public Schools that they had attended. Dido's CV would read, Southend Junior School and Lewisham Sixth Form Academy. Hardly anything worth boasting about so it would be kept hidden unless it was necessary to reveal it.

She'd already worked out most of those who had money, and who didn't. One student wore a ‘Rolex Submariner’ watch. In her former life that person would have been ripe for ‘dipping’ but that was not her target. That was Professor Fox, the deputy head of the department but that was for the long term. Getting her mind around being a student was going to take a lot of effort. It had been a long, long time since she'd attended any full-time education. Her sixth-form college was only three and a half days a week. That gave her plenty of time to do other things. That would not be the case for at least the first year of this course. Because of her age, she qualified as a 'mature' student. As long as she could pay the fees, she was accepted.

The income from her recent trip to Paris would cover all of her fees for the first year and the first term of the second year. That took a lot of pressure off her budget… for the time being. Despite John paying her Council Tax, she had to find everything else including the maintenance charges.

After being her own boss for several years, and having a good deal of freedom about what she did and when, the prospect of attending lectures, tutorials and shudder, and writing real assignments was a shock to her system. John Proudfoot had done his best to prepare her for the delights of assignment and report writing, but it was a task that she hoped to grow into overtime.

The prospect of getting even with the man and his equally evil son who had abused her almost every day for five years was a big lure but on its own, it wasn't enough. John had to butter her up considerably. His main concession was for him to teach her the fine arts of housebreaking and especially safe cracking. She knew that at some point in the future, she would have to use them to get the final bits of dirt on this man who on the surface was an upstanding member of the community but in reality, he was anything but upstanding.

She knew that Fox's dark side, when exposed would make the goings-on of the likes of Jeffrey Epstein pale into insignificance. John's final argument was promising her that they would take down the network that had trafficked her in the first place. That was an even longer goal than sending Fox to jail.

Dido had taken a long time and many, many hours of therapy to put most of what he had done to her, behind her. Getting her to accept that getting even was the best way forward had seen her emerge from the shell that she’d sunk into once she’d gotten away from him was in his eyes, a major step forward.

John had spent many, many days making sure that Dido was on board with the ‘softly, softly catchee monkey’ approach that he wanted her to follow.

After a lot of consideration, Dido had come around to his way of thinking. After all, she was getting an education in a subject that had intrigued her ever since her first encounter with the Police back in Southend well over a decade before.

Now that she was sitting there waiting for the class to start, the reality of the situation was a bit different. All these pretty young things around her, and this was just the men, laughing and joking with each other made Dido seem positively ancient in comparison. At that moment, all her street smarts counted for nothing. She was sure that in time, they would, but for the time being, she was just a 'fresher' like everyone else. She planned to keep her head down until she was able to suss out everyone on the course and, more importantly, the lecturers.

---

Dido’s daydreaming was cut short by the arrival of the first lecturer of her course.
“Welcome to the Department of Criminology and Law. My name is Dr Felix Strauss. I will be your Ethics lecturer for this year.”
Dr Strauss was a man in his mid-50s with hair that was going grey at the temples. What struck Dido the most was that it appeared that he didn't have an ounce of fat on his body. She'd seen the top marathon runners in London for the Marathon and at the Olympics and his body looked just like theirs. One word formed in her mind… Impressive body.

Dido had always thought that she had run her team of ‘dippers’ pretty ethically. That view was destroyed in the first five minutes of his lecture. Only towards the end of the hour did she begin to grasp what sort of ethics he was talking about, and it didn’t apply to criminal organisations. His closing words were…

“Next time I will start to look at the ethics of criminal gangs. We will begin with the evolution of the Mafia and then move on to some of the American cults, like those of David Coresh.”

That was it… the lecture was over. Dido’s mind was racing through what he had covered. A lot of it made sense, but there was a lot that appeared to be pure gobbledegook to her at that moment. She took one last look at her notes and hoped that she could read the scrawl in a few months when she needed to revise for her exams.

“Coming for a Coffee?” said a voice from behind her.

“Our next lecture in not for an hour…”

Dido turned around and saw that it belonged to a woman. In an instant, Dido clocked her. She was the Police or something very close to them.
The woman saw her hesitation.

“I don’t bite, you know, Dido. DI Harrison sends his best wishes and will miss seeing you on his patch.”

Dido didn't know if she should accept the invitation or leg it. Most of her mind said, 'leg it. Nothing but trouble can come from this, but for some reason, Dido said,
“Yes, why not?” she said with the words on a sign that hung above John Proudfoot’s workbench in her mind.
“Keep your friends close, but keep your enemies in a stranglehold until they yield.”

Dido took the appearance of what to her was an obvious police officer on her course in her stride. She had nothing to hide other than her story from before she met John Proudfoot. Her decision to ‘go straight’ had caused a certain amount of joviality amongst those Met Police Officers who had encountered Dido during her time as a very skilful pickpocket in central London.

Amongst those who laughed it off, some officers were downright suspicious of her motives. If Dido was an expert in anything other than picking pockets, it was that she was a good reader of people. She guessed that someone would be keeping tabs on her from time to time, but to have someone… someone so obviously an officer of the law, was a bit of a surprise, as was the direct approach that she had made to Dido.

“You very much have me at a huge disadvantage,” said Dido to the fellow student who had asked her to go for a coffee.
“I’ll go for a coffee as long as you are paying?”

It took the other woman almost a second to grok what Dido had just said. Slowly, a smile appeared on her face.

“I’m Trish Traynor. Do you know of anywhere that serves a decent brew? Not the coloured water we get from those machines.”

Dido resisted the urge to laugh. Trish’s accent was clearly not from the south of England.

“I know of an excellent place near the Barbican if you don’t mind a little walk?”

Trish glanced at her watch.
“We have a Criminal Law 101 tutorial in an hour. I did a year of a Law degree before changing track, and from what DI Harrison told me about you, you know more about the law than most of the lawyers I’ve met.”

Dido smiled but said nothing as they headed for the coffee shop.

“This smells good,” said Trish as she put down two mugs of coffee on the table where Dido was sitting.

“You wanted good coffee. This place serves the best house-roasted Java in this part of the city, but it can be a bit strong at times. It all depends on who is in charge of the roasting of the beans.”

Trish sat down and smiled at Dido. She hated it when people did that to her.

“Well, Officer Traynor? What force are you with then? Durham or Northumberland?”

“You clocked me then?”

“It wasn’t that hard. We oldies rather stand out amongst all those teenagers, don’t we?”

Dido gritted her teeth as Trish smiled back at her.
“What else have you observed?”

“My guess, and it is only a guess… is that you bummed around for a few years after school without a plan in life, and then went to Law School and hated it. Then you stumbled on a career in the Police. Then I guessed that you are not long out of the Training College and that your superiors are glad to see the back of you after only a few months because they think that you are a smart ass. A case of the round peg in a square hole sort of person, if I am any judge of people. My reason for saying that is because even after a few minutes, I can tell that you are a lot sharper and more clued up than most coppers I’ve had the sometimes dubious pleasure of meeting over the years.”

Trish didn’t say anything, but her body language told Dido that she wasn’t that far off the mark.

“Am I close?”

Trish remained motionless.

“Someone must have told you?”

“For some officers in the Met, the prospect of me going straight was just too hard to grasp.”

“Are you? Going straight, that is?”

“That’s your job to find out, isn’t it?” replied Dido.

Trish just sat silent.

Dido took a sip of the excellent coffee. It was far too strong for her to drink regularly.

“Trish? Why are you dressing down?” asked Dido, changing the subject.

“Eh? What do you mean?”

“You are trying to look like a student, aren’t you?”

Trish was wearing a pair of jeans with holes at the knees and a decidedly well-worn top with a small coffee stain on the bottom hem.

“That’s what I am… we are students, aren’t we?”

“We are, but we aren’t the same age as everyone else. From what I’ve seen so far, everyone else is almost straight out of school. At least some of the conversations about their public schools would indicate that sort of thing. Therefore, isn’t it up to us to set an example?”

“You mean glam up?”

Dido laughed.

“Not glam up as if we were going out for the evening. To put it simply, we present ourselves as professional women who are to be taken seriously. After all… that’s what we want to be at the end of the course, isn’t it?”

“I see what you are getting at… Make ourselves attractive to all those dirty old professors and bag ourselves holiday jobs and grade uplifts?”

“Don’t be so cynical. I, for one would love to stop wearing leggings every day. They don’t flatter an awful lot of women.”

“Now who’s being cynical?”

“Cynical? If telling the truth is being cynical, then so be it. Look over the road. What do you see, eh?”

Trish looked across the road at a very fat woman who was wearing black leggings and a white skimpy top. Her ample bust was having a very good go at escaping the confines of a black bra as she battled with a shopping trolley that was full of clothes. The clothes were all neatly folded. There was a laundrette a few doors away.

“If you have got it, flaunt it, eh?” said Trish.
“At least she isn’t trying to hide it.”

Dido shook her head.
“Call me a prude if you like, but I could never face going out if I looked like that. She obviously can, but I couldn’t.”

Trish laughed.
“I guess that you don’t hang out in Clubs, then?”

“Me? No way. For one thing, I don’t want to be, and for another, I like being able to hear things, and for a final thing, I don’t do drugs. I don’t even drink booze apart from a good beer or a glass or two of a decent wine at the end of the week. To be honest, I prefer a good piano concerto or a symphony to almost anything released in the past twenty or thirty years. Music to me is about painting a picture. Rap and modern R&B can’t do that.”

Dido grinned.
“Yes, I was born two hundred years too late, but I can’t help liking the sounds that I do.”

“Wow! Look at Miss Goody Two Shoes…”

“Speak for yourself, Trish, but I had a lot of issues with drugs and booze around me all the time when I was growing up. That was enough to put me off them for good.”

That was a bare-faced lie, but it was part of the backstory that she had concocted for anyone interested in where she came from.

Dido was not going to let on that her parents had started to send her out from the age of 6 to lift wallets and purses so that the money could be used to fund their other criminal activities. Then came the black hole of her life that lasted for more years than she wanted to remember. It was only after she'd escaped that and had been living on the streets that she had an encounter with an understanding Police Officer. He got her off the streets, but this Trish character was never going to know about him if she could help it. Six degrees of separation and all that stuff.

There was an uneasy silence between them until Dido said,

“We have a minute or two before we have to leave. How do you know DS Harrison?”

“My boss and the DS were at Hendon together. My boss is the godfather to the DS’s first child.”

“So, you aren’t officially keeping an eye on me then?”

Trish laughed.
“Nothing of the sort, although if you or anyone on the course breaks the law, then I am duty-bound to act, aren’t I?”

“You are. At least I know where I stand.”

Dido looked at her watch again.

“We should be getting back. I don’t have the foggiest idea where the tutorial is being held…”

Trish grinned.
“Second floor, turn left out of the lift and it is in the room at the end of the corridor on your right.”

She saw the look on Dido’s face.
“I did a reconnaissance of the place last Friday once I’d received my timetable. I have a good memory for places and stuff.”

Dido almost said ‘smarty pants’ but refrained from doing so.
Instead, she finished the last of her Coffee and stood up to leave the shop. The strong taste was going to linger in her mouth for a while. She was glad that she had a bottle of water in her bag.

---

Dido soon settled down to life as a student. Trish was always there in the background, but Dido’s effervescent personality soon won her a small group of associates. One or two might become a real friend after a while, but the rest? Useless twats, but they came as a group. Her intimate knowledge of London allowed her to help those from outside the city to stay out of the less desirable and unsafe parts of the metropolis. As far as the majority of the class was concerned, she was a nobody because of her educational background. John Proudfoot had warned her about people like that, ‘snobs’ and that she should ignore them. He’d seen many ‘know-it-all’ constables fly through training only to fail miserably when it came to real-world policing. Dido pigeonholed these as being just like them.

She found that the course was as interesting as she'd hoped it would be. Dido thought back to when her mentor, John Proudfoot, had suggested that not only was it time to go straight, but to learn new skills. She’d initially refused to even consider it, but over time, she’d grown into the idea and his plan for her to bring Fox to justice. Now, it was all down to her. She had one chance to do it, and that time was now.

At first, Dido thought that these new skills were just to do with opening safes, but John was persistent in his reasoning that she would fit right into student life on a Criminology course. He’d trained her to think logically and look at things from every possible angle. That was helping her manage the people around her. Almost every day, she thought back to the day that she’d tried to break into his car and then say thank you to him for rescuing her from that life.

Dido the student was a very different person from the child back in Southend, who was disposed of by her parents just to settle a debt. While Dido played a full part in the course and student life, Trish faded into the background. This didn’t go unnoticed by Dido. She tried her best, but for some reason, Trish seemed reluctant to step out of the shadows. Dido thought that it was her fear of being exposed as a copper more than anything.

---

When all her efforts to get Trish more involved in the after-college scene, crashed and burned, she went to see her mentor, John Proudfoot.

After listening to her explanation, John sat back and twiddled his thumbs. This was a habit of his. It had irritated Dido for a long time until she understood that this was John just being John. That one thing had taught her a valuable lesson, and that was not to jump to conclusions when it came to people and importantly, when investigating a case.

“My dear,” said John

Dido groaned to herself. This was John's way of letting her know that she was in for a telling-off or some other form of verbal castigation.

“I think you have the hots for a copper,” said John.

“No!”

“Wrong answer. I can read you, my girl. You know it as well as I do. Right from the moment you came here today, your whole aura and body language were shouting to me, ‘I have woman trouble’.”

Dido sat down and waited for John to speak. She knew that he would eventually come up with some words of wisdom. She respected him more than any other man she had ever met. His words and gentle guidance had made her grow up and become a woman of means. That had been way, way beyond her expectations before she had met John.

“I’m guessing here but here goes… I think that it is the cop who is on your course that is the problem?”

“Yeah.”

“My second guess is that it is what she is not doing, is what that worries you?”

Dido nodded her head.

“And my third one is that for some strange reason, you fancy the hell out of her, this woman of mystery who also happens to be someone who would arrest you on the spot if she caught you committing a crime?”

“You got me dead to rights there, John.”

“As you are going straight… what is the problem?”

“Only for the time being… until you know what.”

John sighed and shook his head.

“Didn’t we discuss that before? You know perfectly well that there is a way to get him without breaking the law. People like him do not give up habits like that. It is ingrained in his whole psyche.”

“I know, but…?”

“No buts, Dido. That is the plan. All you have to do is follow it, and he will get what he deserves, and you can go straight. That means you can be free to get down and dirty with the lady cop if you want to, that is?”

“John, I know all that, but it is how I feel.”

“Feel? You don’t feel shit. Sorry, Dido. You have never had a romantic relationship with anyone in all the years I have known you. All you have ever wanted to do is get even with him. How many times did you refuse a date when I dropped one into your lap?”

“That was then. This is now. I feel different.”

John smiled.

“Are you sure that it isn’t down to going straight that is causing your internal turmoil?”

“Don’t you think that I have considered that? I followed all the rules of evidence collection that we covered in class. Whichever way I process it, it always comes back to the same answer… I fancy the hell out of her.”

He didn’t say a word, he just grinned.

“Ok, ok. You warned me that something like this could happen, but… never with a cop!”

“That’s life. It takes all sorts to make the world we live in.”

Then John added,
“Just take things as they come. If I read between the lines correctly, she is holding back from joining the full student social life because of her fear of being found out. If that is the case, then take control. Get her more involved with you on the social side of things. That way, you can see if those feelings are real. If they are… then one day she is going to have to know the truth about you. The plus side of that is that she is a cop; she is less likely to spread it all over social media than any of your other classmates. She’s not going to broadcast that she is a cop from what you have told me about some of your classmates.”

Like most of John’s ‘sermons’, Dido took it and spent some time thinking about it. As usual, he was mostly right. Dido did make efforts to get Trish to become more involved, and it started to pay dividends.

---

[The last week of term]

“I want a thousand-word essay on the issues around giving a guilty plea in court. It is to be written from the accused’s point of view,” said the lecturer, Dr Phillips.

A collective groan went up from the almost one hundred students who were gathered in the lecture theatre.
“Please, no copying stuff straight from the internet and all references must be fully detailed. The references do not count in the thousand-word limit.”

This time, the groan was, if anything, louder than before.

“It is to be emailed to me before midnight on New Year’s Day. Any that are received after that will receive an automatic ‘F’, as will any wholesale copying of previous papers on the subject. I am looking for the words of the accused. The Americans call it allocution.”

There were more groans as everyone packed up to leave the theatre. Dido sat motionless and staring into space.

“Ms Pleasance? Is there something wrong?” asked Dr Lawson, the lecturer.

His words shook her out of her malaise.

“Sorry… Dr Lawson. I was trying to map out the assignment while it was fresh in my mind.”

“Good for you, but don’t you have a tutorial to attend?”

“If you mean the one with Dr Hardy, then I do, but I’ve already done her end-of-term assignment and emailed it to her. She responded earlier, saying that I don’t need to attend today’s tutorial.”

“Are you that keen?”

“No, Sir. I’m just trying to stay organised. I like to get things done in the order that they were given out. I should have your assignment done in three days.”

He smiled.
“This I have to see. If you get it to me by Tuesday of next week, then I’ll add one grade to your mark. I like people who are prompt with their assignments. Last-minute submissions show either a disorganised mind or laziness or both.”

“Sorry, Dr Lawson, I don’t need any favours. I want to be treated like everyone else on the course.”

“Very well. No favours, but I do look forward to reading your work before Christmas.”

“Oh, I am sure that you will,” said Dido with a wry smile on her face.

Dido went home that evening pretty happy with her world. She worked long into the night, and just before dawn, she emailed her assignment to John Proudfoot for comment.

John replied by lunchtime that day. He didn't have much to say apart from her mixing up the different 'Points of View'. Dido made the changes he suggested before going to bed. After thinking about it overnight, she made a couple of minor tweaks before emailing it to Dr Lawson. She hoped that it would cause him to rethink his image of her as being a typical dumb blonde. He'd made a couple of comments in her direction during seminars because Dido had not been asking questions. She was holding fire because most of the questions were, in her opinion, dumb or verging on stupid. If those asking had bothered to listen to the lecture rather than fiddling with their phones, they might not be asking about points that were, in her opinion, perfectly well covered during the lecture. Trish agreed with Dido about the questions. Trish wasn't in his good books because Trish had pointed out that a Law Lord’s decision in 2010 had reversed the previously held legal view on witness tampering. Dr Lawson didn’t bother to acknowledge in the next tutorial that Trish had been right.

Those seemingly little things did nothing to endear Dido or Trish to the majority of their classmates.

Christmas came and went with Dido spending a lot of the vacation at John Proudfoot's home. Most of the time with John, she spent working on the topics that were going to be covered during the next term. John noticed her dedication to the cause, but not without some concern.

"Are you missing her?" he asked one morning just before the new year. Dido was reading an article on the 1984 Police and Criminal Evidence Act. She’d been reading the same page for an hour.

Her first reaction was to sigh.

“You are then. What are you going to do about it?”

“Nothing. I am not going to do a thing about it until after the end of the academic year at the earliest.”

John laughed.

“Are you hoping that she fails her exams?”

“No chance of that. Her law background and cop training will make sure that she passes.”

“What about you?”

Dido made a ‘so-so’ motion with her hand.

“Why are you so-so? What subject or subjects are troubling you?”

“Chemistry. Everyone, and that includes ‘her’, has at least an O-level. I have nothing. I’m winging it most of the time. Crystallography is a total blind spot for me. I have to get through this year, and then I can forget about it.”

John laughed.
“You won’t forget about it, believe me on that. I had a nemesis subject. It almost stopped me from becoming a Police Officer. These days, the rules are not so strict as back then.”

“What was it? Your nemesis subject?”

“English. I failed my O-level four times. It wasn’t until I wrote a paper on the shortcomings of the PACE[1] act that the bosses relented and let me into Hendon on a fast-track path.”

Dido shook her head.
“Look at the references to that article that you are reading,” suggested John with a huge smile on his face.

“You sly bugger, you!” said Dido a minute later. His name was right there.

“Not just a pretty face, you know. Some of the suggestions I made about the operation of the act were adopted by forces all over England and Wales. It wasn’t until the millennium and the advent of some new regulations coming out of the Home Office that those practices fell out of favour.”

Dido just sat there shaking her head.
“Why? Why didn’t you say something?”

“Do you remember what we agreed when you went back to school?”

“Ok, ok. You are there to answer my questions, and you will not impose your knowledge on me unless I ask for it.”

“Exactly. Now, if you want to talk about PACE and the subsequent legislation, given that you have been reading about it, we can continue. If not, I’m going shopping. We are out of bread and milk.”

He smiled,
“Besides, it stopped me from talking the hind legs off a donkey and going way off track in the process.”

Dido took the hint and went back to reading the article. This time, she started making notes of particular points in the law that she would discuss later with John.

John smiled back at his protégé. She was turning into a fine woman and had the potential to become an even better investigator than he’d ever been. Because of her horrific experiences at the hands of Fox, she looked at the world in a way that people like him could only wonder about. He knew from first-hand experience that she saw things in the world around her that he and almost everyone else would miss.

[1] PACE. Police And Criminal Evidence Act 1984.
https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/1984/60/contents

[The following February]

The steady stream of punters leaving the club signified that closing time was near. The flow soon dwindled to a few stragglers. The two doormen looked at their watches anxiously. It was well past 02:00 when the last customer left the club and climbed into a waiting taxi. For the doormen, their work for the night was done and dusted. They went inside and locked the door behind them.

Inside the club, the bar staff had nearly completed clearing away and washing up the glasses. Even the manager pitched in to help and was sweeping the floor. So far, it had just been a normal Thursday night in Camden, North London.

The manager finished sweeping up the bar area and headed towards the toilets. This was the one part of his job that he hated. There was no telling what he'd find in them. It would be a normal night if he found at least a few syringes and some used drug wrappers. No matter what the club tried, it was almost impossible to keep hard drugs out of the club.

The manager, a naturalised immigrant from Greece named Georgios Papandreou, took a deep breath before entering the men's toilet. He knew from past experiences that it could smell too high heaven and have urine, condoms, needles and sometimes much worse scattered all over the floor or even, on the odd occasion, up the walls.

On this particular night, the smell wasn’t that bad. What was bad, though, was the sight of a woman lying on the sodden floor with her dress up around her neck. He looked closer, and it was clear that this wasn’t a genetic woman but someone who had been born a man. This meant trouble for him and the club, but he did the right thing and checked for a pulse. There was one, so he left the toilet and called the emergency services.

Then he went in search of the two doormen. He was in luck. They were about to leave for their homes.

“Sorry, guys, you had better stay put. There is a tranny in the Men’s Loo. She’s been sodomised with a beer bottle. I’ve called the cops and ambulance.”
He used words they’d understand rather than the correct description of the victim.

The two men's faces went white.

“Sorry, Boss, we had no idea.”

“I’m not blaming you. From what I saw, she was more than passable unless you want to start doing DNA tests on the door, which we are not. As I said, I’ve called the Police and Ambulance, and because this place will become a crime scene, they will need a statement from all of us.”

No one said anything.
“Dave, can you retrieve the CCTV disk and make at least three copies of it? We’ll need to give the original to the law, but we’ll need one for our solicitors in case we get sued by the victim.”

“Sure, thing, Boss.”

“Oh, Dave, I don’t want any images deleted, especially those of people arriving and leaving. She’s quite a looker and would not have made me stop her if I were on the door; besides, you were not the scumbags that raped and sodomised her. Those are the people the cops will be after.”

“Gotcha, Boss.”

Then George addressed the other man.
“Terry, I think a strong cuppa for all of us might be a good idea. I get the feeling that it is going to be a long night. It might be good to keep it coming; once the law arrives, okay? We do not want to be in their bad books as our license is up for renewal next month.”

He smiled.
“You must have read my mind, George. I’ll keep them supplied.”

“Send the paramedics to the gents. Please try to keep the cops away until they have done their thing. If there is a photographer with them, let them through, but her medical treatment comes first, understand?”

Both the doormen smiled and nodded at their boss. He was doing everything he could to make this incident as routine as possible, even if it was anything but.

George went back to the toilet and covered her nether regions with a towel. The fewer people who knew what she’d been hiding, the better. Then he sat holding the woman’s hand until the paramedics arrived and shooed him away.

---

George’s prediction about a long night proved to be correct. The sun had risen at least an hour before the Police finally let the three men leave the club. George had drafted in his assistant to look after the place while the Police finished their investigations. The SOCO team would be there for another few hours.

George didn't go home; instead, he headed for University College Hospital. That was where the victim had been taken almost five hours earlier. He hoped that he could be back at the club before the SOCO team left, so he could clean the toilets and lock up.

The people at the hospital were very reluctant to provide any information other than to say that the victim had been admitted. At least he got them to tell him which ward the young woman was about to be admitted to.

On his way back to the club, he called a friend of his. He hoped that they’d know what to do.

“Long time no speak, girl,” he said when the phone was answered.

“Sorry, girl, this is not a social call. Someone like you was sodomised in my club last night and…?”

“Yes, Dido, I do mean just like you down below. It was a bit of a shock, I can tell you. For a moment, I thought that it was you. If it had been, I think I might have keeled over on the spot.”

“She is in UCH, but I don’t have a name or anything.”

"Passable? You bet. She'd outdo 99% of the real females we get in on a weekday night.
We might get some hotter chicks on a Friday or Saturday, but not every week, she’s that good. Her legs are long and thin, if you know what I mean. Her face was messed up with the beating that they gave her, but I’d say that… and sorry girl, she would be more passable than the old you.”

Thankfully, Dido took that on the chin. George was describing the victim and using Dido as a common reference.

“I’ll get the name of the detective leading the investigation and text it to you as well as the ward if I can. They don’t like giving that sort of stuff to strangers.”

“Thanks, Dido. I owe you one.”

He hung up and sighed. When his parents had sent him to England to ‘get educated in the ways of the world’, almost the first person he’d met at his primary school was Thomas Day. They'd bonded almost immediately because they were the school outcasts. He was a boy, but one who was very effeminate and a loner, and he, the son of a Greek shipping magnate who could barely speak English, was staying with an aunt after his parents' messy divorce. They had made an odd couple, but together their friendship blossomed even if they were only seven years old.

For eighteen months, they were best friends, but more than that, they’d become a team. It was them against the world.

Then one day, George's friend just wasn't there. His parents had done a flit from their home, but to a nine-year-old, it was all his fault even if it wasn't.

George didn’t find his friend until many years later, when on a visit to the London Dungeon with his uncle and aunt, a dirty, smelly homeless girl had called him by name. He’d nearly jumped out of his skin. They’d dragged him away in disgust. The wretch bore no resemblance to the boy he’d been friends with. The fact that she’d used the nickname that he’d given him when they became friends all those years ago had made him bunk off school the next day and take the train from Southend to Fenchurch St and go in search of her.

He'd found her panhandling outside Tower Hill Tube Station. They’d crossed over Tower Bridge and walked along the river path to Bermondsey while they talked. George had been sick in the river when she had told him what had been done to her after her parents had more or less sold her to a child trafficking ring and then to a paedophile. Despite her frankly appalling smell, he'd hugged her. They'd shared a fish and chip meal before George had to return home. After that, he'd helped her in any way he could. It wasn't a lot or that often, but for Dido, it was good to know that she was not alone.

Two months later, she met John Proudfoot. John didn’t know much about George until now. It might be difficult to keep John from knowing about George after this. Dido had tried to keep parts of her life compartmented, but as time passed, this was proving to be more and more difficult.

Their friendship was as strong now as it had ever been; despite moving in different circles, they would find time to meet at least once a month since she’d returned to education. George was proud of how Dido was growing up before his eyes. When she passed her A-levels, George treated her to a meal at a top London restaurant. Dido had to get dolled up to the nines for the occasion. His heart went all fluttery when she walked into the dining area. Men all over ogled her and more than likely paid for it later. George was so proud of Dido. Then this had happened.

Seeing the victim lying on the floor with nothing to hide had made him call Dido. The poor sod who was in the hospital needed her help more than anything. She needed to know that she was not alone, as did Dido when she told him about what had been done to her when she was taken from him.

George had known even from their time together in Southend that Thomas had fancied women, and Dido was just the same. That was what had made their friendship last across the years that they were apart.

George went to bed satisfied that he’d done all he could for the time being, but he made a mental note to speak to Dido on a more regular basis. Now, with this new victim, things had gotten more complicated.

---

Dido had taken George's call while she was on her way to the University. For a moment, she debated cutting classes and heading to UCH. After thinking about it for three stops on her bus, she decided to go to the hospital after her last tutorial of the day, which finished at 14:30.

Before she went into her first lecture, she called her friend John Proudfoot. She needed his help just in case the men came back to finish the job.

“John, can you call in a few favours and find out the name of a young woman who was taken to UCH early this morning?”

“My friend from Southend, George, you don’t know about him, but that’s for later, found her on the floor of the men’s loo at the club that he manages. She’d been bum fucked with a bottle and generally beaten up. His words were ‘someone like me’. You know what that means…”

“I know. We always knew that I was not the first nor the last, but… She needs some help… if she will accept it, that is.”

“Yes, I know I rejected your help at first, but that was then. Things are different now, aren’t they?”

“Thanks, John. Send me a text with the details as I’m in lectures all morning and tutorials until half-two.”

---

Dido’s mind was very much ‘somewhere else entirely’ that whole day. Her friend Trish noticed it after the first lecture. Dido would normally ask several questions at the end of the presentation on forensic techniques that had been discredited by new advances in science.

“Ok, girl, what is on your mind?” asked Trish as they walked to their next lecture.

It took Dido a few moments to get her mind into the right gear to answer.

“Sorry, Trish. I got some bad news on my way here. A friend of a friend was rushed to UCH early this morning. She was raped and badly beaten up, last night.”

“Then you should go to her…!”

“I will after lunch. I know that doctors and the like work on their patients in the morning.”

Trish reached and took hold of Dido’s hand. For an instant, Dido wanted to pull away, but decided that this was a gesture of friendship rather than anything else.

“You have a good heart for a ‘tea leaf’!”

“How many times do I need to say that I’m not a ‘tea leaf’ as you so bluntly put it? At least not now.”

“I know that. I can see that I was wrong about you, but there is so much that you are keeping to yourself that it is eating you up from the inside out.”

Dido didn’t answer but smiled at her friend.

The first time she'd called Trish, a 'friend' had stuck in her throat for well over a week. Being friends with someone who was not only a student but a serving Police officer was a new experience for her. After a few sleepless nights, she gave in and called Trish her friend. But there was a lot of her life that was off-limits to her friend. Apart from the man she hated and was certain to bring to justice, only John Proudfoot and George knew what she'd gone through as a child. John had been the one person to take the time to work with her after her rescue from the streets and ensure that she was able to function as a human being. His patience was slowly rewarded, and the person Dido was now, a student, was largely down to him.

---

After lunch, Dido left the University campus and walked to the top of Grey’s Inn Road. From there, she could catch a bus to Euston Road and University College Hospital. During her journey, she went over what she was going to say to this new victim of ‘him’ and his evil cabal. She’d never had to tell anyone other than John Proudfoot and George about those years before. John had listened and not passed judgment until she’d told him everything. George had just hugged her and told her that she was a good person. The one thing that John had never done was to lay any of the blame for what had happened to her. Dido hoped that she could now return the favour.

Dido used the information provided by John Proudfoot and found the ward where the victim, Joanne Young, was located. She went into the ward just as afternoon visiting hours started.

“Hello?” she said as she poked her head around the corner of the cubicle where Joanne’s bed was located.

“Go away. I’m done answering questions,” came a distinctly grumpy reply.

“I’m not here to ask questions. I’m here to help.”

“Bollocks.”
Joanne turned over in bed so that she was facing away from where Dido was standing.

“Joanne, I know what you have gone through. It happened to me as well.”

“So? Plenty of women get raped.”

“No, not last night, but before. You are not alone.”

Dido didn't wait for a reply. Instead, she went and sat down right beside Joanne. She fished a photo out of her bag and shoved it in front of her eyes.

“Look at this. Tell me if you know this man?”

Reluctantly, Joanne opened her eyes. She let out a little scream when she saw the image.

“It is all right. This bastard is not here. I was abused by him just like you.”

“How…. How did you find me?”

“The manager of the club that you went to last night is an old friend of mine. He gave me the heads up about you and where you were taken when he saw what had been done to you by the people who sold you to him. He and I go back to before I was… was taken.”

Joanne sank back into the bed.

Dido took the chance and gently placed her hand on hers.

“How long are you going to be in here?”

“They said until tomorrow morning.”

“Good. Then I can bring you some clothes for when you get discharged.”

“I have my own…”

Dido shook her head.
“If I know anything about the cops, then your outfit from last night will have been seized as evidence.”

“Thank you.”

“Joanne, I know that you have had it tough in the past, but now that you have found me, I hope that you can see that there is light at the end of the tunnel. It won’t be easy, especially after last night, but you are not alone now.”

“You have no idea what I went through!” said Joanne with a few words of defiance in her voice.

Dido leaned over and whispered into her ear for nearly a minute. In the end, Joanne was not only crying but gripping Dido's hand like a vice would grip a piece of metal.

Dido hugged her and sat down to wait for Joanne to stop sobbing.

“I know that it is hard. It was for me until I came to understand that what I did with my life was now in my own hands. Since then, I have taken control and I have dedicated my life to getting even.”

“I never knew…”

“Neither did I until this morning, but my friend George recognised what had been done to you when he found you. George was my best friend from before I was taken.”

Joanne noticeably stiffened up. This time, she understood what Dido had said.

“Don’t worry, Joanne, George is not going to post photos on social media. He is one of the good guys. I know that you probably hate all men right now, but there are some good men out there. I trust two. George, the manager of the club, is one. The other is John Proudfoot. He is a former Chief Superintendent of the Met Police. Without his gentle guidance, I would have topped myself years ago. Instead, I have a purpose in my life. If you want some help, then John and I are here for you.”

“I don’t know.”

“Don’t rush. You need to heal first. Physically, I mean. Mentally will take a lot of time, and you have plenty of that. John can arrange counselling with a woman. She has helped me no end.”

Dido decided to change tack.
“Do you have a phone?”

She shook her head.
“The cops said that there was nothing of mine left behind after they’d… they’d done with me. The scumbags stole it plus my phone, purse and even the keys to my flat, or at least I seem to remember leaving home to get a takeaway with them.”

“Bastards. Ok, can you write down your address on this?” asked Dido as she pulled out her college notepad and gave it to Joanne.

“I think so.”

Joanne's hands were pretty unsteady, but they wrote down an address.

“Thanks. I’ll see if I can get you some of your clothes for tomorrow.”

“Thank you, but how will you get in? My keys were in my purse?”

Dido smiled and tapped the side of her nose.
“I’ll manage.”

Dido stood up and picked up her bag.

“Wait!” said Joanne.

“Who are you? You never said?”

Dido smiled.
“Sorry. My name is Dido. Dido Pleasance.”

“Thank you, Dido.”
She gave Dido a small smile and a slight nod of the head.

Dido left her to rest, feeling pleased with her visit.

---

Dido's happy feeling didn't last. When she arrived at Joanne's flat, she found the door was open. With some trepidation, she stood outside and eased the door open with the back of her hand.

The flat was empty. Empty as in stripped bare. No furniture, no nothing. For an instant, she wondered if she had come to the right place. Then she remembered the mailbox out in the hall. There was one letter addressed to Joanne. That confirmed that she was in the right place.

Now that it was clear, Dido walked slowly inside. She found that even the kitchen cupboards had been stripped bare and … Her heart sank. Someone had decided to erase Joanne from society. The smell of some bleach-based cleaner was everywhere. She bent down and used her breath to fog up the surface of the kitchen table. There were no fingerprints. There were none in the bathroom. Nor were there any hairs in the bath plughole. The smell of bleach and what she would come to find out later was a chemical used to clean up crime scenes, was almost overpowering.

She checked the Bedroom and it was just as spotless. Someone who knew how to sanitise a crime scene had been hard at work.

Then she panicked. What if?

Dido pulled out her phone and called John Proudfoot.

“Hi, John.”

“I did visit her. She identified ‘him’. George was right.”

“No. She’s getting out tomorrow. That’s not why I called.”

“I’m at her flat in Dalston. It has been cleaned.”

“No, I mean emptied of everything and every trace of her has gone. The smell of Bleach and some other cleaners is everywhere. Nothing is left in the flat. No furniture, no carpet, nothing. This is a crime scene level of clean if you know what I mean.”

“I agree. I think that someone who has influence got panicky. I think she might be in danger if they find out that she survived.”

“That’s what I thought. Can you do it discreetly? It is pretty obvious that these thugs have money and an organisation behind them if they could get this place cleared in such a short time.”

“No. Not right away. I’m going to do a bit of digging. Someone must have seen the crew who worked to clear the place in record time.”

Dido chuckled.
“No, I have not gone over to the dark side. It is just some of what I’ve learned on my course rubbing off on me, combined with your excellent tuition naturally... What are the words… Oh yes, ‘follow the evidence’…”

“Please let me know what you can arrange.”

“Thanks, John. I’ll call you later.”

Dido hung up the call and took a lot of photos before leaving Joanna’s now former flat.

---

It didn’t take her long to find a neighbour who was busy putting out a rubbish bin.

They told Dido that they had seen some workmen plus a skip arrive just before 08:00 that morning. The neighbour didn’t think much about it. A bunch of workmen clearing houses was not that unusual for the area. Dido could see why. At least three houses in the street had workmen present with the inevitable yellow or orange builders’ skip outside the house that was being worked on.

The neighbour also stated that they'd left just before 3:00 pm and that the skip was collected less than half an hour before Dido arrived. He knew that because his wife was able to park his car in the very place that had been occupied by the skip when she returned from collecting their children from school. The neighbour said that there was a company name on the skip that had been used to remove her belongings, but could not tell her what it was.

Dido walked back to Dalston Junction Overground Station with just one thing on her mind. Had ‘he’ done this? If it wasn’t him, then whoever had done this had money and influence. Either way, this did not bode well for Joanna and her future.

---

Dido was very subdued when she got to her flat near the Surrey Keys shopping centre. If someone with enough power to have organised the flat clearance at such short notice could do that, what else could they do? Did she still have a bank account? Did she still have an identity? How good was her current identity? Those and a few dozen more questions were on her mind.

Those thoughts and concerns had distracted her so much that she forgot to go to Tesco’s and do her weekly shop. She was almost home before she realised what she’d not done. There was nothing for it but to go back, get something to eat for that evening and do some clothes shopping for Joanna.

---

John Proudfoot called her just before 7:00 pm.
He had good news and bad. He’d twisted the arms of two of his old colleagues from ‘Special Branch’. They were going to stand guard on Joanna until she could be released from the Hospital. While that was good news, John was very worried by the speed at which Joanne’s home had been cleared.

He told her that there had been a rash of similar attacks back in the 1990s in West London. Anyone who crossed the drug gangs had their life erased. He meant totally erased. Banks, HMRC, everything. John's team eventually tracked it down to a bunch of geeks in Stanmore who delighted in declaring people deceased, including fake wills and powers of attorney. Their cohorts went in and cleared their homes and armed with apparently valid death certificates, pocketed their money, pensions and the whole shebang. It had taken them almost a year to pin the crimes back on one particular drug gang. John's opinion was that this crew was a lot more organised and professional. The sheer speed at which they cleared their victim’s home was evidence of that.

That news didn’t help Dido’s mood one bit.

---

Dido was more hopeful than anything when she arrived at the Hospital the next morning. She carried some clothes and some makeup for Joanna, but had mentally prepared herself to find her gone.

To her eternal relief, Joanna was not only still there but was ready to leave once she had some clothes for the street.

While Joanna was getting ready, Dido was getting up the courage to tell her about her home.

Despite all the things that had happened to her during her life, preparing to tell someone that their entire existence had more than likely been erased from society was way outside her comfort zone.

For someone who had been abused like they had, to lose what little she had managed to get together and build a new life was a gut punch and more.

John Proudfoot was waiting for them when they emerged from the Hospital.

“Joanna, this is John. He is, as I said, one of the good guys. He looked after me, and now he’s going to help you move forward.”

“John,” said Joanna in a very uncertain voice.

“Please get in, ladies. Being a former cop can only keep the traffic Gestapo at bay for so long.”

The two women got in the back of his BMW.

“Where are we going?” asked Joanne as John drove through Camden Town.

“To John’s home near Epping,” said Dido.

“Why not my place? I have my things, such as they are, there.”

John looked at Dido via the rear-view mirror. He nodded his head.

“That’s going to be a bit of a problem. I went there yesterday and there was nothing there apart from a council tax demand.”

“What do you mean… nothing there?”

“Your home had been cleared out and surgically cleaned.”

Joanne went white in the face. Dido saw her grip the door handle very tightly.

“Think of this this way,” said Dido.
“My shrink told me that even just seeing things from your old life can trigger PTSD events. When I went to visit the London Zoo, I had one when I saw the steel bars on the door to the male gorilla’s cage. Since then, I have been back, and it is ok. That first time, I didn’t know what happened to me.”

Joanne managed to return a small smile, which didn’t fool Dido for a second. She knew that there was a long and very difficult road ahead for her.

"This is your personal space," said Dido as she showed Joanne the annexe.
“John won’t come in unless you ask him apart from delivering clean bed linen and towels. There is a place to wash and dry your clothes, and even a small kitchen, but beware, John is a brilliant cook. You will be expected to pitch in and help with the washing up, but believe me, it is a small price to pay for some really top-quality meals.”

“But… I only have the clothes I have on me now?”

Dido shook her head.
“I went shopping for you last night. There are several changes of clothes in the drawers and wardrobe. Don’t be afraid to use John’s credit card to help you build up a wardrobe. I regret not doing that when I lived here.”

“How did you get the money?”

“Joanne, I am sorry to say that before I met John, I survived by lifting a few wallets. My bastard father trained me to do it starting when I was five or six years old. It is what I was doing before I met John, and old habits die hard.”

“What do you do now?”

Dido grinned.
“I’ve gone straight if that is what you are asking? Otherwise, I’m a first-year criminology student.”

Joanne shook her head.
“But… you missed so much schooling?”

“We have both missed so much schooling because of him and his pals, but it is not the end of the world. Thanks to John, I went back to school and managed to get some O-levels and three A-levels. Without his gentle persuasion, I know that I’d probably have topped myself a long time ago.”

Dido took hold of Joanne’s hand.
“You are not alone. There are probably more of us out there, and one day, he will be brought to justice. It is my life’s work to make that happen.”

A few tears rolled down Joanne’s cheeks.
“Thank you, Dido.”

“As John said, take your time. Make your future your own. We are here to help in any way we can.”

Dido left Joanne to look around the annexe. She gave John a brief update on what had gone on.

“Thanks, Dido. She is going to take a lot more work on my part, but I’ll take it slowly.”

“Those guys who defiled her in the club need sorting out, but they seem to be so well organised, it hurts.”

“Agreed. I have arranged a meeting with the SIO on her case for the day after tomorrow, which coincides with the first visit from one of Dr. Sue’s colleagues.”

Dr Sue was the counsellor who had helped Dido face up to what had been done to her. That was chicken feed when compared to Joanne. She was off work having a baby, so one of her colleagues was going to be Joanne’s counsellor.

“That was quick work?”

“This is between you and me, but Joanne was not the first victim of a gang rape who had her whole life erased within hours after the rape. The new National Crime Agency are running the show, and the investigation into them has been called Operation Chesil.”

Dido swore under her breath.

“Exactly, my thoughts when I heard about it. It sucks. My first impression was that Joanne was the victim of a gang of Hooray-Henries, but the emptying of her home was premeditated. These guys are organised to the nth degree. We will need a big slice of luck to crack the case,” said John.

His years of experience, although not current, were coming to the fore. Dido had never seen him as worried as he was at that moment.

“Then we need to concentrate on her and not the bastards who deserved to be castrated and made to eat them in public,” said Dido.

John smiled.
“Nice idea.”

“Yeah, I know, it ain’t gonna happen.”

“Dido, you have your studies to think about. Joanne is a long-term project, and the last thing we want to do at the moment is impede the NCA investigations. I’ll make sure that she is shielded as much as possible from their questioning. I may have to pull a few strings, but I will keep her safe. When the time is right, we can go after the bastards. That time is not now, ok? Unless they fall into our laps, Fox is the number one target.”

Dido listened to his statement. She knew him well enough to know that he’d said it from the heart.

Dido, because of her time being held captive, was not a person to physically show affection, especially towards a man, but for once, she put those fears behind her and gave him a big hug.

Dido left John's house after lunch the next day and returned to her home in SE London. Her mood wasn't good, and to make matters worse, she missed getting off the train at Stratford. It was only when the tube train went underground that she noticed what had happened. She cursed to herself that she'd missed her stop. That added half an hour to her journey home. The bad news didn't end there because of the restricted hours allowed for supermarkets to open on Sundays, her store of choice was closed by the time she got there.

One of the local and overpriced convenience stores provided her with a microwavable evening meal, but it wasn't the same as cooking it herself.

That evening, Dido tried to work on an assignment for her forensics class, but her mind was just unable to concentrate on anything but Joanne and the evil people who had defiled her so badly.

Life for her, John and especially Joanne, had gotten a lot more complicated. Her next problem was how she was going to explain the situation to Trish, who would be asking about ‘her friend’.

Dido’s last task of the weekend was to call George and give him an update, but Dido, being Dido, didn’t tell him where Joanna was staying. John had made it clear that the fewer people who knew where she was, the better.

[The following April, the week after Easter]

The looming spectre of the end-of-year exams made Dido concentrate on her studies during the week. At weekends, she was able to help John with Joanne's rehab. Slowly, the memory and trauma of the attack in the club receded into the past until they had an unexpected visit from a DI Farmer, who said that he was part of the Human Exploitation and Organised Crime Command, which was investigating a series of attacks on women that were a lot more than just rape.

“I’ve come to interview Joanne,” said the Detective after showing his warrant card.

“Please come in, Detective Inspector. I’m John Proudfoot.”

John showed the DI into the front sitting room. The room was a bit chilly as it was only used for special events. The house was silent. John could tell that the DI was listening out for other signs of life.

“Please take a seat. Can I get you some tea or coffee?”

“No, nothing for me,” said the DI.

John decided to take the initiative.
“DI Farmer, I am sure that you must appreciate that Joanne is still mentally very fragile. Any aggressive questioning will probably set her recovery back weeks, if not months. I will be present during any questioning just to ensure that you are not overly aggressive. Do I make myself clear? The Toxicology reports indicate that she was drugged with a couple of date-rape drugs. As such, I am sure that you are aware that she can remember very little of what happened beyond going out for a takeaway.”

“Who the hell are you to dictate how I question a suspect?”

“DI Farmer, it is clear that you were not briefed before coming here. I was formerly a Chief Superintendent in the Met. Now? Are my rules clear?”

“I only have your word for that.”

John smiled at the DI.
“If you would like to turn around, you will see a picture of me receiving the Queen’s Gallantry Medal from Her Majesty, Queen Elizabeth. I’m in full dress uniform as you can see. Is that proof enough?”

The DI took one look at the photo and went white in the face.

“Sorry, Sir.”

“Right. Why did you call Joanna a suspect? Do you honestly think that she drugged herself and rammed a beer bottle up her back passage for fun? If you have read the medical reports, they clearly indicate that one of the drugs was administered at the back of her neck. Quite how she could have done that is a question you should have asked yourself before coming out here.”

“Sorry, Sir. I didn’t mean it like that.”

“Let me be perfectly clear with you, Detective Inspector, if you even hint at Joanne being a suspect, then I will make sure that you are patrolling Liverpool Docks on foot for the rest of your career in the Police as a constable.”

“I understand, sir.”

“Good. Now we are clear on the rules of engagement, would you like to share with me the real reason for this visit?”

“Sir, I just wanted to know if… Joanne has been able to remember more about the incident, and especially those who attacked her.”

“Di Farmer, don’t you think that question could have been asked over a simple phone call?”

The DI seemed to be perplexed by his question, so John carried on.

“DI Farmer, don’t you also think that if I were aware of any new information, I would not have conveyed it directly to your task force commander, DCI Adams, whom I know very well as I was his Chief Inspector when he graduated as a PC from Hendon. Therefore, I conclude that there is another reason for your ham-fisted clod-hopping visit.”

There was an awkward silence between the two men. Finally, it was John who broke it.
He took his phone out of his pocket and said,
“Perhaps you should read this email?”

John flicked through a few emails before giving the DS the phone.

Once the DI had read the email, he handed the device back to John.

“So?” asked John.
“Who sent you on this wild goose chase, or do I call your boss and let him drag it out of you?”

“I’m not saying a thing,” said the DI in an angry voice.

“Perfect. You do realise that everything you have said and done since your arrival has been recorded and uploaded to a cloud server. Oh, and by the way, Joanne is not here. I have an agreement with the Met Police Commissioner herself that no unannounced visits would happen because of her diagnosed PTSD. That leads me to suspect that you are not exactly on the straight and narrow when it comes to being a copper.”

The DI could not hold his gaze; instead, he glanced towards the door. John knew what was coming next. To him, it didn’t matter if the DI did a runner; he was done with the force.

DI Farmer, as John expected, headed for the front door. As he opened it, a Police Car with lights flashing pulled up outside. The DI stopped dead. John joined him in the hallway.

“DI Farmer, you also clearly don’t know that Senior Police Officers have alarm buttons that go directly to the security command at Scotland Yard. That even applies to retired Chief Supers. When I invited you in, I pressed one of the several switches that alerted the cavalry, and as you can see for yourself, they have just arrived.”

DI Farmer swore under his breath.
“Go on, swear. All my good friends in the AC-12 Anti-corruption team will want from you is who is pulling your strings. You might think that you are important, especially now that you wrangled your way onto the task force that is investigating the abduction, drugging and rape of several women, plus the organised disintegration of their lives.”

The DI didn’t have time to answer. A uniformed Sergeant arrived at the open door.

John smiled. He knew the local Sergeant from the Ford Cortina Owners Club.

“Sergeant Willis. This is someone who is calling himself DI Farmer. He is to be handcuffed and personally escorted to the AC-12 Operation in Blackfriars and handed over in person to DCI North. He is a suspect in a wide-ranging investigation that they are carrying out. Are you clear about that?”

“Sir! My instructions are to do whatever I can to assist you. If that means taking a possibly bent copper to face questioning, then it will be my pleasure.”

The mere mention of AC-12, the department in the force that went after corrupt officers, was more than enough to tell the Sergeant that this man was not to be let loose.

“Thank you, Sergeant, but please don’t take any chances. Your handcuffs, please?”

The Sergeant handed the former Chief Super his cuffs. John wasted no time in cuffing his hands behind him. John was smiling. DI Farmer looked at something in the distance. He was done.

“Sir,” asked the DI as John locked the cuffs in place.
“How did you know about me?”

“From the information that I received earlier today, it seems that you have been under suspicion for some time. I don’t have any of the gory details naturally, but I had just enough time to get Joanne taken to a place of safety before you arrived.”

He didn't have time to argue. Sergeant Willis led him away. He was done as far as a career in the Police was concerned. All that remained was for him to bargain down the time he would spend in prison. If he cooperated, he might escape with just being dismissed and the loss of his pension. If he didn't, then time behind bars might be the next career move for him.

Once the real police had left, John opened the door to the cellar.

“Joanne, Dido, the coast is clear. You can come up now.”

She appeared a few seconds later. Dido followed her out of the cellar. It had been lucky that the incident happened on a Wednesday when Dido didn’t have any classes due to the Easter holidays. Since the arrival of Joanne on the scene, Dido had taken to visiting her and John on Wednesdays.

“I heard what he said. He didn’t hold back,” said Dido.

“The man was an idiot. Thanks to the warning we received, we were prepared, and he walked right into the trap. I gave him plenty of chances to change his approach, but he didn’t. Searching records for my home address raises all sorts of alarms. The same goes for all former high-ranking officers. These are all part of the anti-terrorist measures that have been put in place since 1995.”

“What now?” asked Joanna.

John smiled.
“Why don’t you and Dido get us some lunch while I forward the video of our unwanted visitor to the Anti-Corruption team and write up my statement?”

Dido smiled and said,

“After lunch, Joanne, we should start to build a plan for your rehab.”

Joanne was about to argue, but John got in first.
“After lunch. We are both operating on adrenaline at the moment. Plans made in haste hardly ever work out. You can think about what you want while we eat. Just remember that I have done this before with Dido, and she was very much the truculent teenager when she was in your place. You are a bit older than Dido when she and I met. You are perhaps not as street-wise as she is, but you are like her in that you have a decent brain. That gives us something to work with.”

“John is right,” said Dido.
“At first, I was very quick to fly off the handle when he made a suggestion. I didn’t want anyone bossing me around. Gradually, it began to sink in that Daddy here was merely directing me in a certain direction. He let me make the choices about my future, but he was always here, ready and able to listen. John’s greatest attribute is that he never jumps to conclusions. It can be frustrating, but he is a good man. That’s why I call him Daddy.”

Dido played her part by sticking her tongue out at John. The slightly tense atmosphere disappeared in a flash.

Instead of starting to plan Joanne’s rehab, the three of them went for a drive in John’s Cortina. Joanne was noticeably nervous for a while, but with John driving and Dido at her side, she soon relaxed and enjoyed a trip to the Science Museum outpost at Duxford near Cambridge. It gave them something to do after the excitement of the morning. It took their minds off the episode with DI Farmer.

---

[one week later]

Once lunch was over and the dishes washed and cleared away, John sat Joanna down at the dining table. In front of him, he had a pile of folders. Dido joined them but sat well away from John and Joanne. She was only there for moral support; besides, she had a report to finish that was due the next day.

“It seems that you have everything already worked out?” remarked Joanne.

“As I said, I’ve done this before with Dido. These are her records, but you are a very different person, and any one-size-fits-all model will not work. Ok?”

That seemed to placate her for the time being.

“The first thing is your new identity. You need to choose a completely new name. One that can’t be tied to your old and now very toxic identity. I would suggest that you choose nothing starting with a ‘J’. Here is a list of suggested names that I received from my contacts.”

“That is a big decision, isn’t it?”

“It is, but you have already done it once when you chose Joanne. Think about it for a few days. When you have chosen it, we can get the ball rolling. The people who will create a new identity for you are perfectionists. It will take at least a month to get a perfect identity with a verifiable backstory, including things like job history and educational records. Don’t worry, it is an iterative process. You will have input on the process naturally, but it has to be verifiable. The idea is that it will be your life from now on, so it makes sense to make it as good as it can be. Besides, you are going to have to memorise it. That’s why we want your input on it at all the key places in the process. Yes, it is a lie, but like all the best lies, there is a lot of truth embedded in it. Your early life will be used for a lot of the background. All that will be changed is the location and things like date of birth by a few months. As I said, it has to be totally memorable.”

Joanne didn’t look that impressed.

"Believe me, Joanne, these people are professionals. Their main job is to provide new identities for people entering the Witness Protection Programme. Those new identities have to be foolproof. If they aren't, then the lives of those in the programme could be at risk.

Joanna was a little overwhelmed by John's preparedness. Then she began to understand that this was normal for him. Being prepared for all eventualities is one of the key skills for a senior police officer to master. That, in turn, gave her the confidence to trust him and the people who would be working in the background to help her.

Suddenly, a thought occurred to Joanne.

“John, I hope you don’t mind my asking, but exactly how did you and Dido come to know each other? From what she has told me, she was living on the streets before she met you.”

He laughed.
“It was simple, really. She tried to steal my car. Not my BMW, but my lovingly restored Cortina that, as you know, sits in the garage below the annexe. I was out shopping, and when I returned, I found her trying to master the art of using a slim-jim on my car’s windows.”

“Oops!” remarked Joanne with a smile on her face.

“Indeed. When I approached, she didn’t leg it as you would expect… I showed her how to do the job properly. That started to build some sort of rapport between us. From the wounds on her face, it was clear that she’d recently been beaten up, but I didn’t mention them. If I had, you would not have seen her for dust. Instead, I offered her a place to have a shower and get her clothes washed, plus I put some steak on the BBQ. That was enough to get her to come here. Then I gave her a key to the apartment over the garage.”

“There has to be more to it than that?”

“The whole process was a bit of give and take. It was clear to me almost from the outset that she had been born male, and as such, she needed help. It wasn’t easy to get her to trust me. You know only too well about trusting someone you don’t know that well. I went on the charm offensive with a few good meals, a nice bed, letting her come and go as she pleased, some new clothes, plus being able to talk to someone who was not going to molest her, which slowly began to work.”

“How did you know… about her past? Most people don’t have a clue.”

John smiled.
“My partner was trans. As a child, he got testicular cancer in both of them at the same time, so… he became a she. We fell in love, and yes, I knew about her from our first date.”

Dido smiled before leaving John to talk with Joanne. The memories of her introduction to a new life were, at times, embarrassing.

John took up the conversation.
“Because of my position as a former senior cop, I was able to get people in to help Dido mentally, but only when she was good and ready. The same will apply to you. I have already been in touch with the experts who helped with Dido. They are on board with doing the same sort of work with you. That includes counselling with a woman.”

Joanne looked a bit stunned. It replicated what Dido had told her in the Hospital.

John added,
“The trauma that you have been through will scar you for life. As with Dido, it is more of a case of managing it. This is all based on how servicemen and women with PTSD are treated. There is no cure. Dido still has some bad days and… well, she is a work in progress, but the challenges of the course have really helped focus her mind.”

Joanne sat silently as she tried to process what he’d been saying.

“One thing that you should be aware of is that the front door is open. If you want to walk out at any time, you can. The door will also be open should you want a place of safety. Dido used that several times when her search for the enemy got on top of her. This place is not a prison or mental home, but your home until such time that you no longer need it, and you can walk down that drive with your head held high. If you need something, then I will always be here to help if I can. If I can’t, then I probably know about someone who can and those people will not ask awkward questions. That includes Dido. Because she went through the same experiences as you did when you were held captive, her experiences since then can and probably will help you. She can’t help with what happened to you at the club, other than being there for you should you need it.”

Joanne managed a small smile.

“Part of Dido’s rehab was putting together a plan for her to get even with him. That plan is still in place today. Studying criminology is all part of that plan. I think that detail was added in revision nine or ten. When I outlined the possibility of studying criminology, she laughed and laughed. After a bit, she realised what it could mean in the grand scheme of things, especially if she was going to bring Fox to justice. The other skills that she has learned will all come together at some point in the future, and allow him to be dealt with by the law. I fully expect that your plan will lead to you joining forces with Dido at the right moment and taking him down, but that is all in the future. You are two very different people, and as I said earlier, the one-size-fits-all model does not work. Eventually, you will find something that interests you, and we can work it into your plan for the future.”

“But… that could be years away?”

“True. But the plan for Dido involved creating a career for herself beyond bringing him to justice. It happened that way because she has a very inquiring mind. I saw that right from the start and worked on that. A nudge here and a nod there. Then there is a lot of truth in the saying that ‘time is a great healer’. Dido was a classic angry teenager when we first met. Now look at her!”

“She does seem to have her head screwed on…” remarked Joanne.

“True. As such, don’t you think that she is a good role model? After all, you are sisters in adversity…?”

“Thanks, John. No one has ever taken the time to lay things out like that.”

John smiled.
“See. We are making progress already, but… I want to impress on you that this is your plan, your life and there is no rush. You have been through more than one severe traumatic episode. Your mental health comes first, last and everything.”

John and Joanne sat talking for the rest of the afternoon. Dido spent time away from the others to work on her revision. It was hard for her to concentrate after being reminded about how she was living before she met John. She shed several tears when she thought back to those days. Everything had seemed so simple then. Being a 'queen of the highway' meant no responsibilities. Things were very different now.

Then a mental image of Trish formed in her mind. Things were indeed very different now. Dido knew that sooner or later, Trish would have to know about John. Whichever way she rolled the dice, they said that Dido would have to come clean to Trish about her past and her relationship with a former Chief Super. And then there was Joanne. Her two nicely separated worlds seemed to be on a collision course, and Dido might not be able to do anything about it.

Slowly, Joanne began to understand what John was going on about. It wasn’t about him at all, but 100% about her and making her ready to face the world after they had dealt with the evil man who had ruined her life and, hopefully, the people who had ravaged her in the club.

Joanne also began to realise that her life before the attack had been just treading water. Working off the books for cash made just enough money for the bedsit, food and travel. She was existing to survive and not end up on the streets. It seemed that Dido had been doing much the same before meeting John. Dido was one person whom Joanne could look up to. If she had done what she had, then so could she!

Joanne went to bed that night with a possible future starting to form in her mind. She had hope for the first time in years. She thought about John and why he was doing what he was for her and Dido before her. Slowly, it began to dawn on her that with his undoubted skills was gently imposing his will on her, but at every step, she could say no. That was just so different from the man who had held her and Dido captive, and who had demanded instant obedience or she would have been beaten again and again until she obeyed.

John had given her hope.
Hope is a 4-letter word. She fell asleep, determined not to let ‘hope’ turn into ‘shit’.

Dido continued studying hard for her forthcoming exams. Moving from an almost full-time career as a ‘dip’ while studying a couple of days a week and then to a full-time student had been a huge culture shock at first, but now, she felt that she had the time to revise properly for the first time in her life. She was determined not to, in her words, ‘fuck this up’.

While she had extensive knowledge of some of the subject areas in the course, there were others where she was a complete beginner. Forensic Science was one of those. Her lack of Chemistry and Biology to at least an 'O-level' standard was a big obstacle.

Thankfully, Trish proved ready and willing to help Dido in those areas in return for Dido’s help with the application of the Law to real events, and then there were the Ethics subjects. Their very different viewpoints provided some lively conversation in tutorials.

Even so, Dido had a good deal of apprehension about the exams. This was heightened when one creep of a fellow student let it be known that in the past, almost all of those who hadn’t come through the Public School system failed their first-year exams.

There were times when Dido had to almost physically stop Trish from giving away that she was a serving Police Officer. There were a few fellow students who were very anti-law enforcement, which seemed rather ironic as they were studying criminology. They reasoned that there were always two sides to any story and that some large law offices employed their own criminologists and subject matter experts just to take down the 100% corrupt ones used by the 'pigs'.

Then there was Dido’s big secret. If that came out at the wrong time, then Fox could get wind of the game that she was playing, and if his track record was anything to go by, Dido’s life could be in more danger now than at any time since her escape from Fox’s prison. All these unknowns and uncertainties worried her.

To Dido, the fake socialist creds of many of her classmates would go right out the window as soon as they got their first month's salary post-graduation. She filed their names in the ever-bulging drawer marked 'to be taken down' if and when she had a chance. She planned to drop the idea of some easy pickings to a couple of her former associates. A little electronic dipping might make them a little more careful with their stuff once a few choice purchases appear on their credit card statements. It would be sweet justice for their almost constant slagging off of both the Police and the Legal System to have to resort to using them because they had become a victim. One of them was more of an anarchist than a socialist. He would need watching if he passed his exams, but given the low marks that he'd received on virtually every assignment, it would be hard for him to pass the year.

Dido wisely kept those thoughts to herself and got back to revising for the exams.

She took the weekend before the exams off and went to the country to breathe some clean air and get her mind reset. Two days of walking along the coast of the Isle of Purbeck did the trick. She returned to London ready to take on the exams.

John Proudfoot and his associates had been working hard on Joanne's rehab. They had to deal with the trauma from her attack and the horrific time she'd had after her abduction as an 8-year-old boy. She was different to Dido in that she was nowhere near as street-wise. That would make her reintroduction back into society a little more problematic. It would all just take a bit more time and effort. John was certain that Joanne should learn to walk before trying to run in the big, bad world.

It was nearly the end of May before she revealed her name before the abduction.

“Francis Read,” she said quietly.
“My given name was Francis Read. They took me from the street in Derby, not far from the old Derby County football ground. I was coming home from school football practice. It was a Wednesday. The next day was fireworks day. Dad had promised us a bonfire.”

Those few simple words were delivered in the voice of a child. It was almost as if she’d transported herself back in time to that very day. Nevertheless, it was a breakthrough.

John engaged a P.I. to look for her family in the Derby area. There was always the chance that they'd moved away years before, but it had to be done. He'd done the very same operation when Dido had finally revealed her past. Her parents were long gone from her former family home. That home had been repossessed six weeks after her disappearance. The trail went cold after her parents stepped off flights to the USA and simply disappeared. It all tallied with her story about them selling her to clear their debts.

Joanne's case turned out to be a little different. Her parents now lived in the Uttoxeter area but had just disappeared overnight from their home in Derby. While they were using what he assumed were their legal names, the disappearance of their son Francis had never been reported to the Police. John's agents dug deeper and found that his very existence had been removed from all official files. The record of his birth had been expunged from the Derby Registrar of Births, Deaths and Marriages, but was there on the national register. Only a few school photos of Francis with his parents at school sports days in the local paper archive as proof that he had ever existed. None of their investigations revealed why Francis’s parents and others had gone to such great lengths to remove all traces of their son from their lives. Someone somewhere had an awful lot of influence. ‘He’ had given her the name of Joanne when he took ownership of her. Like Dido, she’d been punished for insisting on using their old male names.

The PI reported that the police in Derby had no files on her parents, but their backgrounds only went back just over twenty years, which was very strange indeed. In normal circumstances, that would demand further investigation, but John was not a serving officer any longer, so it would have to wait.

John read the report more times than he wanted to remember. If Joanne’s coming into their lives had complicated things, this revelation had elevated it to a whole new level of complexity.

With a sigh, he put the report in his safe. He needed more time to plan an approach to finding out the truth about Joanne’s family. There was no rush at all. From the details in the report, it seemed that her family had put down roots in Uttoxeter. Those roots included a mortgage, whereas in Derby, they’d always been renting. Where the money came from for the deposit was unknown.

While the news about putting down roots pleased him, it made bringing those responsible to justice a much larger task. He'd had his suspicions from the results of the investigation into Dido's background. Now Joanne's results had more or less confirmed that there were darker forces at work in the background. He didn't want to alert them to his search, so he would tread softly from now on.

Whatever step he took next, the last thing he wanted to do was alert Joanne’s parents that someone was investigating them. Moving forward would require a deft hand. Going in like a bull in a china shop simply would not work.
[to be continued]

After the episode with DI Farmer and the PI’s report, or rather what was implied by the report, but not said, and a couple of phone calls, John Proudfoot did something very much out of character for him: he booked a round of golf at the Army Golf Club in Aldershot.

This wasn't the easiest place for John to get to for a 09:30 tee-off, but he wanted the opportunity to have a quiet and very much off-the-record chat with one of the other golfers on the course that day.

The person John was hoping to meet was Chief Superintendent Steve Jones. Chief Jones was in charge of the National Crime Agency’s ‘Witness Protection Scheme’. He and John knew each other from a six-month stint together in the ‘Counter Terrorism Command’. From that time, he knew that Steve lived nearby in Church Crookham and played at the Army Club every Saturday.

London is a very cosmopolitan city with over 200 recorded languages being used daily. That makes it a prime target for all sorts of terrorists to meet, plan, get finance and even be a target for an attack. This is all despite London having more CCTV cameras than almost any city in the world. London is a big place, and the many parks and gardens are great places to meet as they are mostly out of CCTV range. Parks such as Kensington Gardens and Green Park are not the best place for ne'er-do-wells to meet because of their proximity to Royal Palaces, but Hampstead Heath, Richmond Park and others more than made up for it. Steve Jones and John had worked together to target a couple of Al-Qaeda operatives who were in London looking for a financial backer. They used parks outside central London for their clandestine meetings.

That was more than fifteen years before, but John hoped that now Chief Super Jones remembered his temporary senior officer.

Those doubts soon disappeared when the two met in the car park. As it happened, the partner for Steve Jones had cried off just before he arrived at the course.

John waited until the third tee before bringing up a hypothetical situation.

“If, and this is purely hypothetical, a family were in WP and one or more of the associates of the people that they had helped to put away found them and… instead of taking their lives, they abducted their child, what would your lot do?”

“I wondered when you would get around to the real reason you were here at the same time as me today. Someone on my staff must have talked behind my back. Never mind.”

“No one talked, Steve. You are a creature of habit, and playing a round here was one of those, so I took a chance on you playing here today.”

“Ok, ok.”

John remained straight-faced while he waited for Steve to answer.

“Hypothetically speaking, we’d relocate the family and make every attempt to erase all of the child’s history. Because of WP, there is no way that we’d let the media hear about the abduction. Is that what you wanted to hear?”

“Something like that. Again, hypothetically, I have come to know where that child is. They are now an adult, but starting with the abduction, which may or may not have had something to do with their pre-WP history, the child was trafficked to some really nasty people. It goes without saying that those people are paedophiles. Then, sometime after they got rid of the child, the now adult was raped and sodomised by an organised crew. Not only that, their life was erased for a second time.”

The Chief swore under his breath.
“Are you for real here, John?”

“I am. There is one more thing. Was DI Farmer part of your team at any point in time?”

“I heard about him yesterday at a Joint Chiefs’ meeting at the yard. Was it you who turned him in?”

“It was me, I’m afraid. The idiot was stupid enough to use the PNC to look up my home address. That allowed the chief of the operation to give me a heads up.”

“Serves him right,” said Steve.

“I think that we should call it a day and go somewhere very quiet and drop the hypotheticals. Agreed?”

John grinned. His golf game had not improved with age.

Half an hour later, the two men were sitting on a bench under a tree in Farnham Park. A few walkers, mostly with dogs, were around; other than that, it was a perfect place to talk.

John handed Steve the PI’s report. Neither of them spoke while Steve read it.

“That report is pretty good for what it does not say. Don’t quote me on this, but yes, the family are in WP and has been since a week after their son was born. Don’t ask me to say why they are WP.”

“I wasn’t intending to do that. Have you heard of ‘Operation Chesil’?”

“Only briefly. Is the boy… sorry man, a victim of that gang?”

“They are… only they aren’t a boy any longer. There is at least one more victim of the traffickers who suffered the same fate as a child and the subsequent abuse.”

“Fuck. There are some truly evil people in this world. I won’t ask if you know who is behind the ring. If you knew that, I know that we would not be sitting here today unless you didn’t have enough evidence yet to go public. Am I right?”

“You are spot on, Steve. We have a good idea who one of the abusers is, but don’t have enough evidence as yet to get you lot to apply for a search warrant.”

“From your description of the family and the PI’s report, I know who it is. Do I need to initiate a move of location for them?”

“I don’t think so. The PI who produced the report is a former officer from Thames Valley. They are well known for not having loose lips; otherwise, I would not have used them. So far, the child… woman concerned does not know that I know where her parents are and given what you have told me today, I think that it is preferable to let sleeping dogs lie. From my discussions with her, she’s aware of what could happen if she were introduced to them after all these years. She could not take being rejected by them.”

“You say she? The family I was thinking of had a son?”

“Had is the operative word. The people who kidnapped him did a number on him. They cut off his male parts and didn’t make a clitoris. Then they pumped him full of female hormones before trafficking him, or rather her, to a serial paedophile who kept her locked up for years. From the timelines shown in this report and from what I have obtained from the other victim, this boy, who was abducted in Derby, was the replacement for the other victim who managed to escape from where they were being held captive and abused.”

“Fuck. I can see why you started with hypotheticals.”

“All I want to know is this. Were they in WP before the abduction?”

“They were and had been for around nine years.”

John smiled.
“That’s all I needed to know. That leads me to think that the abduction had nothing to do with what they were in WP for, unless it happened to be related to child trafficking?”

“It didn’t. Naturally, I can’t say what it was, but it was most definitely not related to trafficking.”

“Then we are cool. I’ll keep this report to myself and get the young lady a new identity as part of her rehab.”

Steve smiled.
“That’s the John I know. You were always taking care of those under you. That’s why you are still missed. Those who have replaced you seem to have zero skills when it comes to compassion. For them, it is either black or white, good or bad and nothing in between.”

“You won’t get me to argue about that. Thanks, Steve, for being open with me.”

“No, John, I owe you so much for steering me on the right path as a rookie,” said Steve.
“I’ll update their handler in general terms about their son, but that will be as far as it goes from my POV.”

“Thanks, Steve. I’ll destroy the report, and then it can go no farther than us,” said John.
“One last thing. Do you think that DI Farmer is part of or associated with the gang that her parents ratted out?”

“That I don’t know. I assume that AC-12 is handling his case?”

“They are.”

“Good. I’ll have a word with them and get their detailed background file. If he wangled his way onto Operation Chesil, then he may have something buried deep that he wants kept secret. I have a legitimate interest because of my job. Any threat to the people we have to keep safe is treated very seriously, going right to the top in Whitehall.”

“Thanks, Steve.”

“John, keep what you are doing very close to your chest until you have enough to blow these abusers right open. My guess, and this is purely a guess… The person you suspect has connections and… well, I don’t need to say more, do I?”

“You don’t, Steve, but it is entirely possible that some very senior people in the Met are part of the abusers of these captives.”

John was about to say more, but declined. Dido had identified a Chief Superintendent from one of the photos of John’s leaving event. Steve’s grinning face was in the photo, and Dido had not picked him out as being one of the abusers.

The two men went their separate ways shortly after that.

John drove home with his worries about Joanne still uppermost in his thoughts. At least he understood a bit more about her family background. While stuck in traffic near Heathrow, he decided that neither Joanne nor Dido should know about the events of the day. The PI's report could be a vulnerability that needed rectifying as soon as practical. He knew just the location for the document, but Joanne's needs would prevent him from disposing of it for a day or so. In the meantime, he would leave it under the spare wheel in the back of the BMW. He had a safer place for the document, but that could wait a few days.

“Good game?” asked Joanne when he returned home.

“Dismal. Today showed me perfectly well why I didn’t follow many of my compatriots to the course after retirement. I’m not very good. Pretty crap if I am perfectly honest.”

“How much did it cost you? At the 19th hole, I mean.”

John chuckled.
“I wasn’t so stupid as to take part in their wagers. I haven’t played for years, unlike the people I was playing with. They play at least once a week, if not more often.”

“Then why did you go? I mean, if you are that bad?”

“I had to see a man about a dog.”

“That’s what my father used to say before he went off to Antwerp on business.”

The mention of Joanne’s father caused John to stiffen up.

“You have not mentioned him much before,” asked John, hoping that his surprise had not alerted her to his little game.

“While I was being held captive, I always believed that one day, he would come and rescue me. That’s how I survived. Not long after I was chucked out the back of a van in Liverpool, I found the city library. In the reference section, they had all the old newspapers on some sort of film reader. I looked back to when I was taken and nothing. I remembered that it was the week after Derby County had played Birmingham City. I found the match report and worked from there. The thing was that there was mention of my abduction or any police search going on, no, nothing.”

“That must have been a bit of a shock?”

“It was. I always thought that I had a good relationship with him. Whenever he was home and Derby County were playing locally, we’d go to the match, home or away.”

“What did you do then?”

“I left Liverpool and blow jobbed my way to Derby on a few lorries. The last one dropped me off right outside the ground. From there, I knew the way to where we lived. The house was occupied by an Indian Family. One of the neighbours told me that they’d moved away. I placed the date as less than a week after I was taken. That was when I understood that they simply didn’t care about me, and even if I found them, they’d probably reject me out of hand. Mum was always anti-gay. She made me go to Sunday School at the local Church. She was always quoting the bible at me when I goofed up or came home from school with a torn shirt.”

“I guess from that, you aren’t that keen on finding them again?”

“When I discovered that they’d moved and had not reported me missing, I felt betrayed and hurt, but after a while, I just put them out of my mind. I’m angry at myself for believing that he would come and rescue me, but at the time, I didn’t know the truth. As I said, believing that he’d come and rescue me, helped me survive.”

“Then we will have to make sure that no one in the Law goes looking for them then.”

“Do you think that they would?”

“I do. Because you were taken when you were a child, they would want to question them, especially if, as you say, they didn’t report your abduction.”

Joanne looked rather disappointed.

“Then, I will have to make sure that when the time comes, any proposed contact with your parents is strictly off-limits.”

“Thank you, John.”

“There is no need to thank me for anything. I am here to make sure that you are safe and help you get better. Fate has deemed that both you and Dido have given me a new lease of life. After Dorothy died, I immersed myself in restoring my old car. I have to admit that I let things slide quite a bit. Then Dido came on the scene, and I’d be telling you a lie if I said that I didn’t enjoy the task even though it has some downsides. I look at Dido and I see someone who is mostly in control of her life. Now I can concentrate on helping you get yourself back on track.”

Joanne didn’t say anything, so John continued.

“I know that you have heard most of this before, but you really are not alone.”

This time, Joanne came and gave John a brief hug. Until then, she had avoided physical contact with almost everyone, including Dido.

John smiled. He knew that this was just a small step on a long road to recovery for Joanne.

John pondered over the PI's report for another week. He'd said that he would destroy it, but he decided that it was better if he kept it safe. He made a trip into central London and put it in his safe deposit box alongside all of Dido's videos. He also placed a record of his conversation with Steve from the WP Team in the box. He'd felt unclean about recording it at first, but he needed a backup in case things went pear-shaped at a later date.
On his journey home, he found himself thinking that this case was more complicated than anything he’d ever had to handle in all his years as a police officer. He wondered what else would come out of the woodwork before Dido and Joanne were able to hold their heads up high.

Two days after the end of their exams, Dido, Trish and many of their classmates went out to celebrate the end of their exams and with it, their first year as students. They bailed out after the fourth pub as the rest were heading to a nightclub.

Being older than their classmates, they had the 'been there, done that, got the T-shirts' and had their own reasons not to get drunk. Neither of them could afford to become loose-lipped because of too much booze.

After bailing, Dido took Trish to a small Italian restaurant on the aptly named Sicilian Avenue near the British Museum for a quiet meal between two like minds.

“When are you heading home?” asked Dido once they’d ordered.

“I’ve booked my train ticket for next Tuesday. I must be out of my place by the end of the week. I’ve arranged to rent a small van for the day so that I can take everything I don’t need until next term to a storage unit.”

“Are you sure that you are going to pass?”

“You have to be positive, don’t you?”

Dido grinned and offered up a toast.
“To next year and the hope that Toby and Jake fail miserably.”

Trish laughed.

The two jerks in question, Toby Perkins and Jake Smith, were a right PITA. They thought that they knew more about criminology than the lecturers. They'd picked a good number of arguments during the year and had lost every single one of them, but that was just like water off a duck's back to them. They had specifically not been invited out for the evening. Dido had been clear with the two organisers. "If they come, then count me out". They were not invited. Trish had backed her up on that point.

“What are you doing this summer?”

“I’m going to visit a friend for a couple of weeks. You remember her? She was assaulted last February and is still a bit of a mess.”

“Do the Met know who did it?”

“They don’t have a clue, I’m afraid. She needs a friend to be with her. So far, she has not ventured far from where she is undergoing rehab.”
That was a lie, but it was better to keep Trish from getting too inquisitive.

“Ok, then, where is this friend of yours?”

“She’s in Essex at the moment. She’s staying with another friend of mine.”

“You seem to have friends everywhere?”

Dido shook her head.
“Not really. I have a few very close friends and that’s it.”

After briefly hesitating and reading Dido’s body language, she moved the subject on.

“After that, I’m going to North Wales. I’ve rented a cottage on the coast near Carnarvon for a couple of weeks. Peace and quiet and local food. I went to Anglesey last year, but that place was fully booked, so the owner suggested this place. Very quiet and right on the sea.”

“On your own?”

Dido shook her head.
“I hope that my friend who was attacked comes with me. It will give her a nice change of scenery.”

“If she doesn’t? Come, that is?”

“Then I’ll get ahead with the syllabus for next year. Long walks in the morning, a nice lunch and then a bit of studying.”

“And if it rains? Wales is famous for that. One year, we went to Colwyn Bay for our summer holidays. It rained nonstop for five days while Whitley Bay was bathed in sunshine. My Da vowed never to set foot beyond Liverpool again and only goes there because of the football.”

“Childhood memories, when they are good ones, are wonderful, aren’t they?”

“We had some great holidays. Even our days out to places like Kielder Water were fun. What about you?”

“Nothing like you. I left home as soon as I was sixteen just to get away from the violence,” said Dido.
She was lying through her back teeth, but this was her backstory. She’d had years to perfect it. Only someone with a lot of time and money could even begin to poke holes in it.

“You, poor you. Didn’t you go to the Police?”

“And do what? My Da, as you put it, was a local magistrate. Who are they going to believe, eh?”
That part was also a lie. Her real childhood was not something to remember and would be right there front and centre until ‘he’ and his friends were behind bars for good.

Dido went back to the University a week later. It felt different from before. That was down to the lack of students. The reason for her visit was that it was the day when the exam results were posted. She'd promised to take a photo of Trish's results and send them to her on her newly acquired iPhone. The old phone had been relegated to the more clandestine side of her life.

When she arrived outside the department offices, a large group of students had congregated around the notice board. Dido felt nervous for the first time in years while she waited for the crowd to thin. None of her brushes with the law had invoked feelings of anticipation like this.

Dido, being Dido, waited for the ‘must be first’ crowd to have their moment of fame or shame in front of their friends. Some of those who had failed or had to resit were, in her mind, good students, while some of those who passed should never become a criminologist in a million years.

It was a troubled Dido who finally stepped forward and looked at the results list. Her heart was pounding.

She need not have worried. She'd passed. Not only did she pass, but to her surprise, she came in the top 5% of the class. Trish was just behind her on the table. A couple of her classmates congratulated her on doing so well. Dido returned the favour..

Dido was about to turn away when she remembered her promise to Trish. She took a photo of the results. As she got the camera on her phone to focus on the right part of the sheet of paper, she noticed the list at the bottom. That was of those who had failed or had to resit one subject. Both Jake and Toby were on the ‘resit’ list. That made Dido very happy. She’d be even happier if they failed their resit exams. Her wish might come true given the plans for their summer that they’d boasted about for weeks. According to his boasts, they were going to crew Toby’s father’s yacht in the Fastnet race. The race was due to end three days before their resit exams. Crewing a yacht in a race as demanding as that one is not exactly the best preparation for an exam.

Dido took the photo and walked away from the almost constant stream of people coming to view their respective results.

Once she was outside the building, she sent the photo to Trish and added a message saying that their ‘not friends’ had to resit at least one subject before being allowed to return for their second year in September.

With her duties for the day over, she went back to her home in Surrey Keys, a very happy person. Once back there, she started to pack a bag for her visit to John Proudfoot’s home. More than once, she debated letting him know that she’d passed. In the end, she wanted to see his reaction when she told him.

---

“Here you are at last,” said John when Dido arrived at his home.
“We were beginning to think that you had decided to drown your sorrows in a pub?”

Dido grinned.
“I went home and packed a few things before coming up here.”

“Well?” he asked.

“I passed. In the top 5% no less.”

“Well done, girl. You did good.”

“And?”

Dido guessed that he was referring to Trish.
“She passed in the same group as me.”

Just then, Joanne came bounding down the stairs. For the first time since they’d met, she was smiling.
“I heard that you passed. Well done,” she said.
Then she gave Dido a big hug.

“Thanks, Joanne. I have to admit to being rather nervous, but seeing my name near the top of the list quelled that feeling in a flash.”

John was standing back with his arms folded and with a rather smug look on his face.
“I never had any doubts that you would pass.”

Dido stuck her tongue out at John and smiled at the same time.

Over a late lunch, the three talked about the summer.

“When are you going to Wales?” asked Joanne.

“In a week’s time. Why?”

“I was wondering if I could come up for a visit? John has volunteered to drive me.”
The seeds that Dido had been dropping on her last few visits had borne fruit. John was in on the plan.

Dido tried to look unhappy.

“I was sort of wondering if I could borrow your car for my trip…?”

John smiled.
“I guessed as much. Yes, Dido, you can borrow my car. I’ll borrow Tony’s Jag for our visit.”

Tony was ‘Tony Jefferies’. He ran a small building company from a site less than a mile from John’s house. Tony’s company had done a lot of work on John’s home when he bought it in 2004. John had taken a financial interest in Tony’s company when it ran into cashflow problems during the financial crash of 2008 and now owned around 20% of the company.

“Thanks, John. You know I enjoy driving that car.”

“Just be careful. You don’t know where all the speed cameras are. It would not look good to lose your licence in one trip.”

Dido grinned. John had paid for a former Police Driving Instructor to teach her to drive. She’d passed both tests with ease.

“I will take it easy.”

“Just watch the A55 along the North Wales Coast. The locals just love putting out mobile cameras and catching tourists.”

“I wasn’t planning on going that way, but I’ll bear it in mind. I was planning on going the pretty route through Snowdonia. I’m in no rush provided I can hit the M1 by seven.”

John just smiled. Dido was growing up fast and in the process becoming a more complete adult than many who had not gone through the terror of being imprisoned for years. He knew that was down to her determination, the skill of her shrink and a little bit to him for being the wise old parent that she never had.

[two weeks later]

Dido had been at the cottage for three days and was beginning to chill out when she received a phone call from Trish.

“Hey Girl? What’s cooking?”
“You are? Where are they going?”

“No… Not Whitley Bay…”

There was a definite touch of sarcasm in Dido’s voice. Trish’s family usually went there every year on holiday, even if it was less than forty miles from their home.
“So, where are you going if you have decided to do your own thing?

“Here?”

Dido thought about what having Trish stay would mean. John and Joanne were coming up as well. At that moment, she had no idea what to tell Trish about John other than the truth. That could put a spanner in the works, as could her feelings for Trish. Dido took a deep breath.

“Yeah. Why not. There is plenty of space as long as you bring some bedding. When I rented the place, I only arranged for one set of bedding and towels, and the letting agent is a man who thinks that he is god’s gift to women, but he has a bad case of B.O.”

Dido laughed as Trish reacted to her joke.
“Bangor. That would be the best place to come on the train. You could come to Pwllheli, but that takes an age from Birmingham. As far as I know, there are trains to Bangor from Manchester.”

“Tomorrow would be best. I have to do some grocery shopping in Caernarfon, so going the few miles farther into Bangor won’t be a problem. I think that there is a Tesco store there.”

“Good. I’ll see you tomorrow. Bring your walking boots! Just don’t forget to let me know what time your train arrives.”

“Bye.”

Dido put the phone down and immediately panicked. John and Joanne were due to come up the day after and would need a heads-up. Joanne was recovering well, but possibly unpleasant surprises were strictly out of the question for her.

Until now, Dido had managed to keep the two distinct parts of her life separated. That was now a thing of the past. She knew deep down that if she and Trish were to have a future, she’d have to come clean sooner or later. That day was now.

Dido sat looking out across the sea towards Anglesey. A two-masted schooner was moving graciously out to sea. For a moment, Dido wished that she could teleport herself to the deck of the schooner and sail off into the sunset, never to return.

The ship was a small dot on the horizon by the time Dido made a decision. She would have to talk things over with Trish before her other visitors arrived. That talk would mean telling Trish the truth about herself. She kicked herself for agreeing to let Trish come for a visit. Her obvious feelings for Trish had gotten the better of her, and it could signify the end of their relationship before it had really started.

[the next day at Bangor Railway Station]

“You made it then?” said Dido as Trish came down the stairs from Platform 2.

“Only just. My train to Manchester got held up outside Victoria, and I only just made it to Piccadilly on time. Then I had to stand as far as Chester.”

“The joys of travelling by train at the last minute at the end of July?”

“Ok. There is no need to rub it in. I will book a seat for my return trip at least from Manchester.”

Trish put her bags into the back of the BMW 5 Series Touring.
“This is a neat car.”

Dido grinned.
“I borrowed it for my trip. I’ll tell you all about it when we get to the cottage.”

“I looked up the place on the map, and there is nothing there…?”

“That’s the point, my friend. Lots of peace and quiet, and long walks along the sea wall. A perfect antidote to the big city.”

Trish shook her head as she got into the car.

They’d just left Caernarfon when Dido noticed a Police Car with its lights flashing coming up behind them. She looked ahead. There was plenty of space for the car to overtake them, but they didn’t.

“I wonder what they want?” said Dido.

“What do you mean?”

“Your fellow boys in Blue. It appears that they want me to stop.”

Dido signalled left and pulled into a bus stop. She wound down the driver's side window and switched off the engine.

“Trish darling, don’t let on that you are a Police Officer. It won’t go down well. Only say something if they are about to take us into custody.”

She was about to ask why when an officer got out of the passenger's side of the cop car and came towards the car.

“Good afternoon, officer. What seems to be the problem?” asked Dido when he reached her door.

“Would you mind explaining what you are doing driving this car?”

“I am insured to drive it, or at least that is what the owner told me before I borrowed it.”

“You do know that this car is marked as being a Police Car that was written off?”

Suddenly, a few bells started to ring in Dido’s mind.

“All I know is that my friend bought it and had it returned to its original state.”

“Just who is this friend of yours?”

“Retired Chief Superintendent John Proudfoot. He worked for the Met Police until he retired.”

“Pull the other one. How are you a friend of his?”

“Officer, if you are going to give me a ticket, then please do. Then we can all get on with our day.”

“Being cheeky will get you nowhere, young lady. Driving license, please?”

‘It is in my purse, which is on the back seat. Can I get it?”

The office stepped back. Dido got out of the car and retrieved her purse. She gave her license to the officer.
“I don’t have any points on my license, and as far as I know, I am insured to drive this car.”

“I will return to my car and check this license.”

“Please do.”

He left them and went back to his car.
Trish leaned over and was about to say something.
“Trish, do not say a word. I’ll tell you all about it when we get to our cottage.”

A little over a minute later, the officer returned.
“I’m sorry for detaining you. My colleague checked with the DVLA and discovered that the car was re-registered and does belong to the person you say it does. The insurance details show that you are indeed insured to drive it. I’m sorry for bothering you.”

He gave Dido her licence back and left her standing by the side of the car. Dido didn’t move until the Police car had done a U-turn and was heading back towards Caernarfon.

She gave a huge sigh of relief and got back into the car.

“Don’t say a word. I will have a few choice words to say to John when I see him tomorrow.”

Trish smiled.
“I was only going to say that this wasn’t your first encounter with my lot?”

Dido laughed.
“I guess that it is time to tell you the truth about me. It is a good job that I bought a nice bottle of wine when I did the shopping earlier.”

“You don’t have to do that.”

“Oh, Trish, but I do.”

“Why?”

“This is why…”

Dido mentally crossed herself before leaning over and kissing Trish.

The short time that they’d been apart had been hard for Dido. On the drive up to North Wales, several times, she nearly turned right and headed for Newcastle. Now Trish had come to her, and it was time to come clean. If that burnt her bridges with Trish, then so be it. She could not keep her feelings for Trish hidden for much longer.

Trish was taken by surprise by Dido wanting to kiss her. She slowly responded, but broke off the kiss before it got out of hand.

“Sorry, Trish,” said Dido.

“Don’t be sorry, Dido.”

“I owe you an explanation. I will understand if you want to bail out after that.”

“No explanation is needed. I… I missed you more than I could bear, that’s why I came.”

Dido ignored Trish’s words. She had something to say, and at that moment, nothing was going to stop her from getting the words out.
“Oh, believe me, Trish, it is needed. Let me get us to the cottage, and then over dinner, I will explain it all.”
She started the BMW’s engine, put it in gear and found a gap in the afternoon traffic and continued along the main road.
Trish saw a look of determination on Dido’s face that was unlike anything she’d ever seen before.

Dinas Dinlle is a small hamlet on the coast to the south-west of Caernarfon. There are a few dozen houses, a couple of Café’s, a Hotel, a Chip Shop/Ice Cream Shop and a set of public toilets. Other than the Iron Age Hillfort that gave the place its name, there was little to offer a visitor other than a bit of beach and great views over to Anglesey. Nevertheless, it is popular with day trippers, possibly because of the free parking. Many of those who had been there for the day were leaving as Dido drove the BMW into Dinas. The cottage that she’d rented was down an unmade road just beyond the centre of the hamlet.

Trish didn’t say much on the journey to the cottage. Dido tried her best.
“A bit different to Whitely Bay, then?”

Trish didn’t respond.

“Here we are,” said Dido as she parked the car in front of the cottage.

Dido helped Trish unload her bags.
“Your room is on the left at the top of the stairs. The bathroom is straight ahead. Get your things stowed away and come down to the kitchen.”

Trish just grunted and headed upstairs. Dido turned her attention to the shopping and what she was going to have to reveal to her guest very shortly.

“That was lovely. Thanks. I didn’t realise just how hungry I was after all that travelling,” said Trish as she finished the meal.
“No, Trish, thank you. I don’t often get the chance to cook for someone. Today it is just us, but we’ll have two more visitors arriving tomorrow afternoon.”

There was a silence between the two. Dido broke it by pouring Trish another glass of wine.

“My story is complicated. First off, everything that I have told you about myself is almost 100% a lie. The reason why will soon become clear.”
Dido took a deep breath and continued.

“It all began when I was seven and a half, coming on eight. My father got deep into a financial hole with the wrong people, although I didn’t understand it at the time. He did a couple of failed smash-and-grab jobs before they came for payment, which he didn’t have. The result was that those moneylenders took me as payment. Yes, even in the 21st century, people trafficking is alive and flourishing in England. My parents did what we call ‘a runner’. They flew to the USA and have not been seen or heard of since.”

“What happened to you?”

“The details are very painful for me to even think about. The lenders sold me to another group of even worse people. Then it gets all very hazy. I know now that it was down to the drugs that they used on me.”

Dido fell silent. Trish could see a tear in her eye.

“If you don’t want to go on, that’s ok with me. I can see that it is painful.”

Dido managed to look Trish in the eye even though she was close to tears.

“Trish, I was born male. The bastards cut my dick off, removed my testicles and the like … pumped me full of female hormones. Given how old I was, those hormones had a dramatic effect on me.”

It took Trish quite a while to process what Dido had just said.

“Fuck…” she muttered.
“That must have been awful?”

“I was way out of it most of the time, thanks to the drugs. They kept me strapped down to a bed while I healed both down below and to my throat. When I had recovered physically, I was sold again, this time to the man who was to abuse me every day for the next six years. He kept me in a cell or chained up like a pet monkey when he let me take a shower. He or his son made me suck them off almost every day. At weekends, I’d take one up by ass from one or more of them or their multitude of guests, or I’d suck them off or both. If I didn’t perform, then I didn’t get any food or water for two or three days.

Trish reached across the table and took hold of Dido’s hand.
“Please stop. I can see how much this is hurting you.”

Dido shook her head and wiped away the tears.
“Trish, you are a special lady, but everything I’ve done in the last six years has been with one aim. It was all going so well until you came into my life and I began to have feelings for you. I’ve had so many sleepless nights since wondering how not to tell you about the real me. Then, you came here and knew that I had to tell you.”

Dido wiped away another tear.
“Tomorrow, one of the two people who is coming to visit is… is just like me. We think that she was my replacement or the one after that, but we aren’t 100% sure of the timeline yet. Thanks to a lot of luck, I escaped from my prison and went on the run. From my conversations with Joanne, she’s coming tomorrow. I know that she was a replacement for someone, but I’m inclined to think that there was someone else between us. That victim may have taken the ultimate step and topped herself, but that is pure speculation on my part.”

“That means there is a third person who has been surgically altered doing the same thing as you right now?”

“That is true. I don’t know if I was the first one… “

“Who the heck is this animal?”

Dido sat motionless for nearly a minute before she spoke.

“You know him. We both know him.”

“Me? How?”

“Trish, my nemesis is none other than Professor Fox.”

Once again, Trish was taken by surprise at what Dido had said.
“What? You can’t be serious?”

“I am… totally serious. Joanne… she’s coming tomorrow, took one look at his photo and was ready to kill him on the spot even if she had just been sodomised with a beer bottle.”

“But…? Why are you putting yourself at risk like this? What if he recognises you? He must know some very bad people.”

“I look very different from what I did back then. Thanks to John, I’ve had quite a bit of work done on my face, and my blonde hair is, as you know, out of a bottle.”

“But… even so. Isn’t it a huge risk?”

“It is one that I’m prepared to take if, in the end, he gets sent down for the rest of his life. Once he is arrested and charged, he’ll find out who I am. Then I’ll see him in court.”

“I still don’t understand why you are doing it this way. Can’t you just go to the Police with everything?”

“Until recently, it was just my word against his. I had no proof. Nothing. I was not even sure where he’d held me… us. Given who he is and his standing in society, I’d be laughed out of court.”

“But studying criminology? Why?”

“John Proudfoot is why. You will meet him tomorrow. He is, as you know from earlier, a former Chief Superintendent in the Met. To cut a long story short, I was living on the streets when I tried to steal his other car; he effectively rescued me from an early grave. Once I had escaped, I survived by panhandling, as the Yanks call it and being one of the best pickpockets that the Met has ever seen. Begging and getting into all sorts of scrapes is not a plan for the long term. He saved my life and gave me direction. Studying criminology is part of my long-term plan thanks to his gentle persuasion. It gives me the skills to find his weak spot. Given his position in the University and that he’s a QC, we know how clever he is with the law and next year, we get to see him at work in court. I’ve already seen him in action at least a dozen times, and believe me, he is like a dog with a bone. I want to be ready for his onslaught when I get called to give evidence. He will try to bury me alive, starting with my sexual history. It won’t matter to the jury that it was him and his equally deviant son who made me give oral sex to many men; he will make out that it was all my doing, all while being held in a cell. Yeah, right!”

Dido swallowed hard.
“Anyone taking him down has to be smarter than him. We have to have the evidence to convict him, even if it means going public with it and exposing him to the court of public opinion.”

“I still don’t get it?”

“John asked me what I would do when… note, he didn’t say ‘if’ when I took him down, what then? Doing so would leave a huge hole in my life. That’s when he suggested actually studying criminology. It took me a while before I saw what he meant. The skills that we learn should give us gainful employment for the rest of our working lives. Besides, I get to see how Fox works at first hand. John told me a lot about how he literally takes apart the life of a key witness right there in front of the jury. He had that experience himself when appearing as a witness where Fox was the defence barrister. John dropped the hint.”

Dido swallowed before continuing.
“Naturally, I didn’t believe him until I saw him in action for myself at the Old Bailey. After a lot of work and many hours of gentle persuasion by John, I bought into his plan. I got an education and was able to leave my days as a ‘dip’ behind me for good. Since then, I have seen it for myself, and it is not a pretty sight, believe me. Learning his tricks is the only way that I could ever not only stand up to him in court but also get the better of him. A guilty verdict is all that I am after. Fox is like a dog with a bone. He just won’t let go when he gets his teeth into a witness. He will relish jousting with a student. His narcissism will not let him ease up in his attack on me. I will fight him tooth and nail, and I will win because that narcissism will cause him to make mistakes. Then, I will pounce. I have to do this for all of those who have been held in that cellar.”

“That leads us to the here and now. By taking Fox’s classes, I get to learn more about how he works, and hopefully, when it is my turn to face him in court, I will be able to survive the ordeal. As far as I know, I am the only survivor who could even remotely stand up to his questioning. A lot of that is down to the help that John and my shrink have given me. It took me a long time to properly trust him, but I would not be here right now if it weren’t for him.”

“Sorry, I’m rambling. You are the only person… I’ve never told anyone about myself like that before, other than John Proudfoot.”

“I get you now… I think.”

“It isn’t easy. Knowing what he did to me almost every day, it isn’t easy to resist just taking a knife into one of his lectures and killing him on the spot after removing his dick and making him eat it in front of everyone. That would be one form of justice, but John has persuaded me that I should do it the legal way… for the time being.”

Trish looked concerned.

“Don’t worry. I’m not going to do it. He made me suffer for all those years. I want him to suffer for the rest of his life. When he is convicted, he will have a hard time in jail once the news about him abusing children gets out. I mean the trial transcripts. I would not be stupid and rat him out to the inmates; I’d send a copy of the transcripts to one of his cellmates. They should know who they are sharing a cell with. If that sounds sadistic, then just put yourself in my place. I only want an eye for an eye. Is that so wrong?”

“Dido… I don’t know what to say”

“Don’t say anything. It was all going so well. Then on that first day, you made yourself known to me, and it went downhill from there.”

“What are you saying?”

“I never thought that I would ever have feelings for someone, but… I do. After the adrenaline rush of dealing with that traffic cop, I let them get the better of me. That’s when I kissed you. I’m so sorry, Trish. It should not have happened like this.”

“Dido… I don’t know what to say.”

Then Trish said,
“The problem is that I have feelings for you…That’s why I wanted to come here, to see if you had similar feelings for me. You do but…?”

“But now you aren’t so sure?”

“I don’t know what to think. Your story is almost?”

“Unbelievable?”

“I didn’t say that, but yes.”

“It is very true. I can show you if you’d like. Down there, I am a sexless eunuch. The bastards didn’t even leave me with a fake clit.”

“How can you reconcile them robbing you of your manhood?”

“For a long time, I fought it. While I was captive, I just had to survive. When I was free, I was angry with everyone for not coming to rescue me. John arranged for me to see a shrink. It took her some time, but I came around to having a simple choice for my life. Get even or top myself. I’m still here, so obviously I didn’t take the latter option. Once I’d made that decision, it was easy to accept that, thanks to the huge quantity of female hormones that had been pumped into me over the years that going back to life as a male was a non-starter. As I said, all was fine until you came into my life. At first, I didn’t know what was happening to me. When I went to see my shrink last Christmas. I nearly cried when she said that I was having romantic feelings for you. I had never in my wildest dreams expected to even feel anything but hate towards another human. What made it worse at the time was that John had suspected the same thing, but being John, he waited for me to bring it up. Once you get to know him, you will understand just how special a man he is.”

Dido finished speaking with a sigh and a shake of her head.

Trish sat looking at her friend, still trying to fully grasp what she’d been told. Part of her training wanted her to question every word, but Dido’s offer to show her physical evidence pushed all of those concerns way out of her mind.

Finally, Trish said,

“What do you want me to do?”

“Trish, I want nothing more than your moral support until he is sent down for life. A word or three of comfort when I hit a brick wall. Besides, you are a serving Police Officer. Your loyalty must be with them. Then, I’m strictly in information acquisition mode now and for the foreseeable future. Both John and my shrink impressed on me the need to do this by the book. We both know some of the very important cases that have been thrown out because of improperly obtained evidence, or did you learn nothing from the last two lectures from… oh yes, Professor Fox’s assistant, but it might as well have been him ranting on!”

“Ok, ok. You are taking the softly-softly approach.”

“It is the only way. The last thing I want to do is rush into any conclusions. Fools rush in and all that…”

Trish sat back with her wine glass cradled in her hand. The frown lines on her face told Dido that she was deep in thought. Dido decided to speed things along. She added half of the remaining wine to Trish’s glass. The rest of the bottle went into her glass, but she refrained from drinking it. Unlike many people her age, she’d never been a drinker. One or two glasses of wine were her limit.

"Dido…" said Trish after a few minutes of deliberation.
“You do seem to have your head screwed on, but I get the feeling that there is still a lot of fragility just beneath that veneer that you present to the world. Your very controlled nature is just like some of those serial killers that we touched on last year. Their very single-mindedness is what sets them apart.”

Trish’s analysis of her psyche momentarily stunned Dido.

“What does Dr Trish prescribe?” asked Dido, trying to lighten the moment a bit.

Trish giggled.
“Dr Trish… I like that.”

There was an awkward silence between them.

“Look, Dido, we are going to be a lot fewer of us next year. It will be harder for you to disappear into the crowd.”

“Me…?”

“Yes, you, Dido. You go out of your way to avoid making waves or attracting attention to yourself beyond dressing like a professional woman. At first, that got some comments from a few lecturers. Now they expect it, and therefore, we are part of the furniture. I wondered why you suggested that we do it. After a week, I knew why. We, unlike many of the straight-out-of-school mob, are treated as adults and are clearly not to be messed with. Whereas most of the others on the course are generally not regarded as serious criminologists. The marks we get on our papers put us at the top of the class. I’ve seen some of your original work, and it is beyond good. You have an insight that no one else in the class even comes close to. When I went back north at the end of term, my DCI asked me about the class and who looked like making it as a Criminologist. I told him about this person who seemed to know more about the law than the law professors, but was hiding themselves under a huge bush. I was talking about you, Dido. No one else comes close.”

Trish drained the remainder of her wine from her glass.

“But with less of the rabble in our lectures and tutorials, it will be harder to avoid taking a more active part in the classes. You know so much about the subjects, such as Criminal Law, Evidence and Processes, but you hide it very well. Sooner or later, you are bound to slip up. You need to watch yourself and do your best to …”

Trish laughed.
“I hate to say this… You need to do your best to stay on message.”

Dido saw the funny side of her comments.

“Thanks for that. Yes, you are right. If you look at my workbook, you will see that I wrote down very much the same thing yesterday, but your version is more eloquent. After your phone call, I went for a walk along the sea wall to Fort Belan. It was farther than I thought, but it was worth it. The walk gave me a chance to think about last year and the year ahead.”

Then it was Dido’s turn to do a bit of probing.

“Can you tell me one thing, Trish?”

“I’ll try.”

“What exactly was your remit when it comes to keeping an eye on me?”

Trish laughed.
“There wasn’t one. If you can remember our exact conversation, I never answered you. I let you think that I was reporting back to the powers that be about you. I’m not and never have been.”

“Why the fuck did you do that?”

“Because the fool in me said, ‘it would look good on my record if I could get you arrested and convicted for some sort of crime’. At the time, it seemed like a good idea.”

“When did you change your mind?”

“When I saw the real paper that you had written on gang ethics, in what? The second week of the course. It was so different from the one that you submitted. I took a photo of the summary and forwarded it to my Inspector. He came back to me and ordered me to bin any ideas of turning you in and that I could learn a heck of a lot from you. The one you submitted was so dumbed down that it said almost nothing. The real one would have gotten the lecturers talking. I could not figure you out at the time. Now? I get it, or at least what I can assimilate tonight.”

Dido thought for a moment before asking,
“And have you?”

“I would not be sitting here if I hadn’t. Teaming up with you might raise some eyebrows in one or two forces, but your insight into so many things that go on in the real world that are invisible or almost invisible to people like me was the only way that I got through the exams.”

“Same here,” whispered Dido.
“I would have failed Chemistry if it weren’t for you.”

Dido was clearly embarrassed to have to admit that she’d learned a lot from this young copper.

Neither of them wanted to ask the next question. Eventually, Trish said,

“Where the heck do we go from here?”

Dido smiled and looked out of the window.

“Where we go from here is to wander down to the beach and watch a truly gorgeous sunset!”

Dido took Trish’s hand, and together they walked across the road and onto the sea wall to watch the sun go down.

A good part of Dido was hoping that Trish would not bail out, but feared that she would. Getting mixed up with Professor Fox and those who had sold her could be terminal for her career as a police officer.

While they watched the sunset, Trish gently probed Dido for more details of the abuse that she’d suffered at the hands of Fox. Dido told her about the prison cell that she’d been confined in seven days a week, that she got the chance of a shower once a week and that she’d been fed food laden with female hormones.

As the last of the sun disappeared below the horizon, Dido kissed Trish again. This time, Trish responded right away.

Trish went to bed knowing that Dido was telling the truth. At first, she’d wondered if it was just some story to get her into bed together, but the sheer level of detail that Dido went into convinced Trish that she was hearing the truth. A horrible truth inflicted on innocent children by a much-respected member of society. It shocked her to the core.

Her last thoughts were that Dido needed help, and if she could provide at least some of that, then she would. In the words of one of their law lecturers, ‘Justice Matters’[1].

[1] Justice Matters is the name of a YouTube channel hosted by Glenn Kirschner, who was a Federal Prosecutor in Washington, DC. I highly recommend it. He is a no-nonsense commentator on the US Justice System.

“What time is the Chief Super expected?” asked Trish the next morning.
Since Dido’s revelation about her true past life, Trish had been doing a lot of thinking. Dido knew her well enough to let her do her own thing, and she’d talk to her in her own good time.

The two of them had just finished clearing away the breakfast things.

“I’d expect them to take about 4 to 5 hours to get up from Essex.”

“After lunch, then?”

Dido shook her head.

“A late lunch, I think, unless we hear from him in the meantime.”

“What’s the plan then? I mean, before they arrive.”

“A trip to Morrisons in Caernarfon is on the cards. The Beemer needs some fuel. We can do both at the same time.”

“But… you went shopping yesterday before you picked me up?”

“I did. But I got this text early this morning,” said Dido.

She picked up her phone and showed Trish a text.

“I was expecting them to stay just a couple of nights. John didn’t give any reasons why they were staying longer. John is not a man to do things on the spur of the moment.”

“There has to be something else?”

“That’s what I thought, but John is old school. He prefers to give people bad news to their faces. None of this email or texting of important stuff for him. He is direct and honest, and that I what made me trust him in the first place. Now? I dare not think what I’d be doing if he weren’t part of my life. His whole style is one of gentle persuasion. He drops hints and suggestions so that you come up with an idea that was perfectly aligned with his all along. That is what made him such a good boss in the Met. Believe me, I scoured the press for dirt on him. Even the reports of his retirement were oozing with praise for his skills as a cop and the regret that he was leaving. There was nothing that even hinted at him being on the dark side”

After half a second of thought, Dido added,
“His late wife was trans. He read me right from the start but didn’t make a scene out of it. That’s why I began to trust him.”

“He seems to be quite a man?”

“Trish, he is a decent human being… for a cop.”

Trish laughed.

“We seem to have bought half the shop,” complained Trish as she loaded the last of eight bags of shopping into the back of the BMW.
Dido grinned.

“I just took advantage of the extra pair of hands to stock up. Besides, with four to feed, then this lot won’t last that long if I know John.”

“He eats a lot then?”

Dido smiled and shook her head.

“No. John loves getting out of the car and walking… I mean for miles. If the weather looks good, I expect that he’ll propose a gentle stroll up Snowdon. That requires fuel at halfway and at the top, if not beyond.”

“A gentle stroll?”

“John was a uniform cop for nearly all his working life. He started on the beat… I mean a PC who walked the streets. Back then, it wasn’t unusual for him to walk 10 or even 15 miles a day. Even when he became a Chief Inspector, he continued walking. He’s completed the London Marathon four times in under three and a half hours. He walked me to death when I started living with him. It was his way of getting most of the wild girl out of me. No matter what I did, I could not outwalk him. As a therapy, it worked big time. Gradually, his gentleness got through to me.”

“He seems quite a good person… for an ex-Chief Super that is?”

“He is very much old school when it comes to policing. Pounding the beat makes you very observant of the world around you. On our walks around the forest and in the pretty villages in Suffolk, he’d challenge me to observe the world around us. He taught me so much about life. In my eyes, he is about as good as it comes. I learned early on not to underestimate him. There is a steely determination about him. There has to be… He would not have made it to Chief Super if there hadn’t been something special about him.”

“I’ve seen your observational skills at first hand. I’m starting to be a bit in awe of him.”

“Don’t be in awe. Just be natural and none of this ‘Sir’ crap. Ok?”

Trish laughed, then she said,

“If I know anything about ‘Uniforms’… Once you get to Chief Inspector, the job is mostly about man management.”

Dodo chuckled.
“He told me early on that there are two styles of managers. Those who rant and rave and make themselves known to their bosses. He called it the ‘Being seen to be doing nothing’ manager. The other is the quiet sort who looks and listens.”

“I guess that he’s the latter sort then?”

“He is. As I said, he gets people to do what he wants not by ranting and raving but by gentle persuasion, plus a bit of arm-twisting when needed. That’s how I began to trust him. He… He became the father that I never had. He will always be that to me, no matter what happens. He is the one person in the world that I trust implicitly.”

Dido’s admission didn’t altogether surprise Trish. Some days, she could not read Dido’s body language, but today, it was being broadcast loud and clear.

“We need to get this frozen stuff back to the cottage!” remarked Trish.

“True.”

During the drive back to the cottage, they passed the spot where they’d been stopped by the local Police Officer the previous day.

“If this is an ex-police car… was it just the run around for a senior officer or?” asked Trish

“Was it an ‘interceptor’? Is that what you are thinking?”

“Damm it, girl, you know me too well…” replied a smiling Trish.

“Yes, it was an interceptor. It might not have the ‘M5’ badge, but it is that and a lot more under the bonnet. I took a look at it this morning and saw a very non-standard twin turbocharger. Why?”

“Why would John want a car this powerful? It seems out of character for him?”

Dido laughed.
“John has one weakness in life, and that is cars. His restored old Ford Cortina is now set up for classic car racing but is still street-legal. The same applies to this beast. He takes the BMW to various circuits and takes on Porsche 911s on ‘track days’. That’s how he blows off steam. Thrashing a 911 is very satisfying, I know that personally. I saw him do that, and then he would buy the Porsche driver’s dinner. That’s the sort of man that he is.”

“Yet? He lets you drive her?”

“I know my limitations thanks to the former Police Driving Instructor who taught me to drive in this very car. I’d probably kill myself in pretty quick order if I tried to use even a small proportion of the capabilities of this beast. The electronics of this beast allow me to select the drive mode. I set it in comfort before I left to come up here. I’ve never dared try any of the other modes.”

Dido frowned and then smiled.

“Fancy a small wager?”

“How small?”

“A fiver. That’s small.”

“Ok, what for?”

“If we don’t go up Snowdon, what are the odds that he’ll suggest a trip over to Anglesey and a few laps of the racing circuit there?”

Trish thought while Dido slowed down and took the right turn onto the lane that led to Dinas Dinlle.

“Snowdon for a fiver,” she said as Dido pulled up in front of the cottage.

“Done!” agreed a smiling Dido.

Once the food had been put away, Trish made her move.

“Dido, I know that telling me about yourself was hard. Anyone who has been through what you have and has come out the other side with your head screwed on as you have it, someone that I want to be with.”

“What are you saying?”

“What I’m saying is that I’m here for you. Last night, I thought long and hard about Fox, and you are right about him. He needs to be taken down if even a tenth of what you say he did is true.”

Then, without any hesitation, she kissed Dido.

“Are we good then?” asked Dido when they broke apart.

“More than good, my darling.”

Trish’s show of affection surprised Dido. She’d never experienced anything like it before.

“We have a problem, though,” said Dido.

“You mean when we go back to University?”

“Yeah.”

“We have the rest of the summer to work it out, don’t we?”

Dido smiled and gave Trish a quick kiss.
“Let’s go for a walk along the sea wall to the old castle. I need a bit of sea air in my lungs.”

Hand in hand and with smiles on their faces, the couple went out for a walk. A crime-fighting team had just been formed.

John and Joanne arrived just before 2 pm. The lunch that Dido and Trish had prepared was very much appreciated.
Once the dishes had been done, John said,

“Ladies, my… our extended visit is not purely to be social.”

His tone of voice told everyone that he was serious.

“If Dido and Joanne could sit down at the table, I have something to tell them.”

He looked at Trish, a little uncertainly.
“John, Trish knows about me, and we are cool about everything.”

John's left eyebrow lifted so high, it almost reached his hairline.

“Dido?”
“Sorry, John, things sort of changed between us… and I had to tell her everything.”

John thought for a few seconds.
“Trish? How did that make you feel? Knowing about Dido and what she has been through?”

“To be honest, Sir, I felt both unclean and unworthy. Dido is a remarkable woman.”

“None of this Sir crap, please. I’m retired.”

“Sorry, S… John.”

“Ok, if all three of you would sit down at the table. I have some news that could impact all of us.”

"Joanne knows a little of this, but there have been two major developments. Firstly, the gang of thugs who attacked Joanne have struck twice in the past week.

The silence in the room told him that he had everyone’s attention.

“The first victim is in Intensive Care. The Bottle cracked as it was inserted into her rectum. Her colon was ruptured and she lost a lot of blood. She should recover, but the big news is that the cracked bottle also injured one of the attackers. We have some of their DNA. These guys are always so careful, but this was unexpected. I suspect that a little bit of panic set in. There was a lot of blood and… their first thought was to leg it.”

“I take it that the DNA is not on record?” asked Trish.

“Correct. But it is the first real bit of evidence we have on them. We also know that they have at least access to some state-of-the-art electronics and weaponry. They laser-blinded three external CCTV cameras earlier that evening. Then they carry a phone signal jammer, as well as not carrying any phones themselves. These guys are very, very good.”

It was Dido who spoke next.

“Just the sort of kit that you can buy in several online stores in the USA. Don’t ask me how I know that, but I do.”

“Are you saying that at least one of them is from the USA?”

“From what Dido said, they are, or at least one of them has a job that or travels regularly between London and the USA… The City of London is full of companies with US Offices or vice versa,” remarked Trish.

“That is exactly what the task force is now thinking. I had a long talk with the SIO yesterday. The team are worried about the escalation in not only violence but frequency. I asked him about Joanne and, in particular, her safety.”

An icy cold had fallen over the room.

“The media is looking into each case with renewed interest. One paper has somehow gotten hold of the names of all the victims apart from the latest ones. It seems that at the weekend, there will be a huge article on it published and that detailed photos of the victims will be posted in their online editions overseas. They can’t post them here as the identities of rape victims cannot be made public unless the victim gives their consent. Joanne is the odd case out for obvious reasons. That will mean increased interest in her case. Naturally, we want to avoid that. In light of that, we have come up with a plan. It is early days yet, but it may involve a fake funeral for Joanne.”

It took the three women several seconds to understand what John had said.

John continued.

“Putting that aside, their modus operandi has evolved since the first attack and even more since the attack on Joanne. It could be that there are multiple teams at work. One idea put forward within the team is that it is a competition or even a game. One team does something, and the other one tries to outdo them. Whatever it is, they are very well organised and professional.”

“I get two things from what John has said,” remarked Dido.

“Firstly, they have spent time and money choosing a location. Sorry, Joanne, the more I hear about them, the more I think that your attack was more like an initiation than a planned operation. They had you for six hours and could have taken you almost to Scotland in that time, but they didn’t. Also, they needed to obtain the clothes that they took you to the club in. To me, this is all a bit ad-hoc and thinking on the hoof, whereas the other attacks are planned well in advance, especially the recent ones.”

John smiled.
“I can see that this student malarky is rubbing off on you?”

“Malarky?” exclaimed Dido.

“In a good way, naturally.”

“Trish, do you agree with Dido’s conclusion?”

“I do.”

She looked at Joanne.
“Sorry, Joanne, but at least it has allowed you to find out that you are not alone, and in time, I’m sure that you will play your part in taking ‘him’ down big time… when that time comes.”

“Thanks, Dido. It does get a bit daunting at times, but knowing that I have support from everyone here makes it all manageable.”

“The second bit of news also concerns Joanne,” said John as he changed the subject.

“Joanne, would you care to do the honours?” suggested John.

She managed a small smile before saying.
“My shrink has been working on me for months now. A couple of weeks ago, she broached the issue of how I look.”

Joanne looked at the others. Her expression said plainly, ‘I am nervous’.
“I resisted all talk about making me look a bit more feminine until… Until she showed me the before and after photos of you, Dido. Then the news came about a leak of the victims’ details, including mine. It didn’t take much persuasion from John, and the result is that I’m going to get fixed up. At least with a different face, identifying me will be harder, especially with that exposé about to be published.”

Dido chuckled as she remembered going through much the same anguish.

Dido turned to Trish.

“This is how ‘he’ does not recognise me at Uni. In case you have not noticed, I wear coloured contacts every day. It is all part of blending in, as Dr Martin calls it when he talks about undercover work. I found that out by accident when out panhandling. No one looks twice at a homeless person if they are there every day, especially one with badly bleached hair and in dire need of a good shower.”

Trish looked a bit surprised.

“I hadn’t noticed the lenses until Dido told me yesterday.”

“Joanne will be going away for however long it takes next week,” said John.

“That’s why we decided to come up. The clinic that is going to work on Joanne is in Cheshire, so… We are here, and we should make the most of our short time together.”

Trish looked a bit edgy. John saw that.

“That includes you, Trish. Once Dido had read you in on the case, you are part of the team, and I’ll have no arguments on that matter… Got it?”

None of the women raised any objections.

“Good. Now, in the meantime, the three of you should do something girly or whatever you call it these days.”

“What sort of thing?” asked Dido.
John grinned.

“I took the liberty and booked the three of you into a spa in Llandudno. A bit of pampering and the chance to make yourselves look stunning. Then some shopping because tomorrow night, we are all staying at the Pebble House Hotel, which is almost the best place in town, and I’ve reserved a table at a French Restaurant just a short taxi ride away.”

“When did you arrange all this?” asked Trish.

“Dido only told me about herself last night?”

John smiled.

“She texted me about reading you in on her situation when she went to bed. I burned a bit of midnight oil to sort it all out. The confirmations came as we drove up here. For some reason, she insisted that I play dumb about her reading you in on the case. I still don’t know why, but it does not matter now.”

“So that’s what all those messages were about?” asked Joanne.

“They were.”

John looked at the three women. All of them were buried in their own thoughts.

“Ok, who is doing the cooking tonight?”

Dido laughed.
“I’ll do it. We picked up some nice Menai Straits Mussels and some local smoked Trout on our recent shopping trip. They will need to be eaten up today. There is a nice Vino Verde that I can use to cook them with and drink. Now… If someone would like to make some bread… Fresh bread, mussels and wine make a great starter”.

“I’ll do it,” said Joanne.

“After all, what can go wrong when it comes to making bread?”

John rolled his eyes and shook his head.
“Joanne has had… shall we say, a few episodes when it comes to cooking.”

Joanne smiled and stuck her tongue out at John.

“May I suggest making Soda Bread?” said Dido.
“I bought some Bicarb today. Using that means that there is no need to wait for it to rise a few times.”

“Dido bawled me out for not telling her the full history of the BMW. For that, I apologise. Trish, sorry for possibly putting you on the spot like that.”

Trish grinned.

“That’s ok, John. It was an education for me. The way Dido handled it was textbook perfect. That is certainly an interesting car…”

Dido went a little red in the face.

The meeting ended on a happy note.

The trip to the Spa and the later shopping trip were a welcome break for all three women. Trish was reluctant to dress up for their night out, but some gentle arm-twisting got her into a dress and heels.

When they went down to the hotel lobby in their finery, more than a few heads were turned. Joanne was justifiably nervous, but with Trish and Dido at her side, she managed her first outing in the evening since that fateful trip to the Chinese takeaway all those months ago.

A visibly pleased and smiling John was waiting for them.

“Ladies, you look fantastic if you don’t mind me saying so…”

Trish went a little red in the face.

“Our chariot awaits,” said John as he directed the trio to the main entrance of the Hotel.

The meal was as good as the menu promised. Neither Joanne nor Trish had ever tried French Cuisine, so it was a voyage of discovery for both of them. With guidance from Dido and John, they chose dishes that were not too strange for their palates.

By the time the Taxi dropped them off near the Hotel, a good time had been enjoyed by all four of them.

“A little after-dinner stroll will help the digestion,” said John.

They promenaded back to the Hotel, although Trish was visibly struggling when they reached their destination.
“I’m just not used to anything other than flats or DM’s,” she complained.

“Then, my dear, you should get some practice in. If you want to be a detective, then being able to go undercover is part of your job. It goes without saying that wearing heels is an essential part of being able to blend in with others when the case demands it,” said John.
Trish just glared at John. Dido laughed.

“You wear them then!”

John laughed.
“If you had some in my size, I’d gladly wear them. It would not be the first time that I’ve worn heels. My late wife loved her heels, and yes, she bought some for me to try. I still have them somewhere at home,” he said with a smile.

Trish had no answer to that put-down. She began to understand just how special a man John Proudfoot was and why Dido called him her father.

Once they’d returned to Dinas Dinlle, John got the three women to sit down.

“I have something to tell you,” he said.

“Yesterday, while you were in the spa, I received a phone call from DCI Masters, the SIO on the rape cases. He told me about a development that affects both Joanne and Dido.”

“Should I make myself scarce?” asked Trish.

“Didn’t I say that you are part of this team?”

“You did but…?”

“Trish, what I am about to tell you is confidential, but not illegal in any way. Please stay.”

She relaxed.
“There have been two developments in the past two days. One is hopeful and the other is not.”

He had the attention of the three women.

“The gang that so savagely attacked Joanne has struck again. This time, a 4th-year medical student in Edinburgh was attacked as she walked home from her shift at the Royal Infirmary. She is recovering in that very hospital. Her injuries are worse than Joanne’s but she should recover physically, but, mentally, she is now scared of all men including doctors. It appears that this crew hypnotised her into believing that all men are only interested in having sex with her. There is a treatment, but it will take a long time, as you can guess. These thugs need to be caught. They destroyed her life in a new and horrible way. The thing is, she was not LGBT but hadn’t dated since she started her course. The local CID think that money was tight. Her bank account had less than three hundred pounds in it at the time of the attack. It was emptied while she was in the ambulance on her way to A&E. Both the Hospital and University Computer systems were hacked, and all traces of her were removed less than an hour after the attack. Organised is just not adequate enough to describe this bunch of sadists.”

No one wanted to speak. Digesting the news was going to take some time.

“The good news was that her abduction was captured on the CCTV of a Bus. From that image, Edinburgh Police were able to get a good view of the van’s registration number. It belongs to a 2005 Ford Transit that has not been taxed or insured for at least seven years.”

“The registration number was put into the nationwide ANPR system.

After a brief pause, he continued.

“That same van pinged an ANPR camera the next evening on the A64 as it approached the city of Leeds. They had managed to get from Edinburgh to Leeds without pinging an ANPR camera. The ANPR Camera on this bit of the A64 was only put in a week ago. That tells us that someone on their crew or crew is a cop, or they have a cop under their control. I’m inclined to believe the former option, which makes me very sad.”

John let that sink in.
“A Police Car gave chase, but this van must have been re-engined as it outpaced the patrol car. The pursuing vehicle was not an interceptor, so it is understandable. The crew called in a nearby Interceptor and Helicopter support, who took over the chase. That ended close to Leeds City Centre when the two people on board bailed out and lost themselves in a crowd, leaving the Elland Road football stadium at the end of a pre-season friendly match. A team of forensic scientists from the NCA have been going over the van. They found DNA from more than twenty women, including Joannes’. Most of those women had been raped or kidnapped and came from all over the country.”

He turned to Dido.

“This all happened ten days ago. Since then, SOCO has been going over the van inch by inch.“

John paused for a second before saying,

“Dido, your DNA was found. It was degraded because of time, but it was an 85% match.”

Dido had given a sample of her DNA when she was picked up by the police as a suspect in an assault when she was living on the streets. The real assailant had been captured a week later, but her DNA was still on file.

Dido looked visibly shaken.
“But…” she muttered.

“Dido,” said John.

“This evidence seems to indicate some sort of causal link between the two sets of crimes. However, there is other evidence from the van that makes the link only incidental.”

“What sort of evidence?” asked a visibly confused Trish.

“The current thinking is that it appears that there is an underworld version of Avis or Hertz operating.”

“Didn’t anyone know about this before?” asked Trish.

“That, my dear, is the knockout question. The answer is ‘possibly’. It has long been known that there is an active supply chain of stolen vehicles that are ‘cleaned’ and then sold on to criminals. This seems different. The cab of the Transit had recently been disinfected, much like a crime scene cleanup, but the back of the van was a total mess of DNA and rubbish. It had also been modified in a very surprising way. I am sure that you are aware that in recent years, many Police Vans have had mobile cells added to the back. It is designed to make the transport of prisoners safer for all, prisoners and officers alike. This van was recently modified to have what the NCA people are calling a proper Police Cell. This is causing all sorts of questions and finger-pointing. It is not as if you can pop down to a B&Q or Halfords and leave with a Police spec cell under your arm. That one thing has sent a lot of Chief Constables into a frenzy. Everyone in England has been ordered by the Home Secretary to account for all vehicles that have been through their hands with one of these cells. The Scottish First Minister has herself ordered the same inventory. The First Minister in Cardiff and the interim head in Northern Ireland are doing the same. If just one van was sold off for some reason, the cell unit intact, then heads will roll. In my opinion, the cell was added by the same people who put a turbocharged V8 engine in a rusty old Transit. The drivetrain and suspensions were upgraded, and it had the latest Police Radio hidden in the dash. This would be a serious piece of kit if it were in the hands of the Police. If there are more like this van in the armoury of the bad guys, it represents a huge escalation in their capabilities and the corresponding threat they present to all police forces across the nation.”

“What does all this mean?” asked Joanna.

“The short answer is… we don’t really know. The longer answer is that we took one step forward and five hundred back.”

“What I want to know is, now my DNA is still in the Van? The last time I can positively remember being in the back of a Transit was when I was sold to the traffickers. That was when I was 8 years old. Unless…”

Everyone looked at Dido.

“I remember that I got a bad toothache about a year before I escaped. He… as in Fox gave me something for the pain. The next thing I remember was being back in my cell minus one wisdom tooth. It could be that they transported me in the van to somewhere that gave me treatment. I don’t know any more.”

“That problem, my dear, is causing a lot of head-scratching in the Met and with those involved with Operation Chesil that now spans all forces in England, Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland.”

“In other words,” remarked Joanna,

“The darlings of crime fighting in the Murder squad are no further forward in solving my abduction and rape. Nothing new there then…”

“There is something else, Dido. The Met team want to interview you. They went looking for you on Oxford St. but…?” said John.

Trish looked a bit concerned. John saw this.

“Trish, Dido used to run a team of pickpockets in the West End.”

Trish looked a bit uneasy, so John continued.
“Before giving all that up to become a student, she had been quietly tipping off the Met about some very serious crimes up to and including murder, for several years. Without her information, some very serious crimes would not have been solved. There was… shall we say, a gentleman’s agreement between the various parts of the Met to leave her and her team alone while she continued to give them good information.”

Trish smiled.
“For a moment there, I thought that you were some master criminal?”

After a second or so of silence, everyone laughed.

“Nothing I have said could be deemed admissible in court. I’m sure your studies would have told you that.”

“That’s true. If the Met turned a blind eye in return for some hot tips, then I’m happy to do the same, even if some of our Law lecturers would disagree,” said Trish.

“It looks like I should head back to London and talk to the Operation Chesil team ASAP. The discovery of the van has, IMHO, really muddied the waters. It does link the two cases, but that link is very tenuous,” said Dido.

“Who’s the criminologist now?” joked John.

“But seriously, do you now see how useful your course will be in bringing to justice those who defiled you and Joanna will be?”

He added,
“A long time ago, I saw something in you that made you very different from most of the victims I’d ever come across in all my years in the Met. With every passing day, I see you becoming a really good investigator. We will bring Fox to justice, then… we can look at the gang of rapists. Small steps, ladies, small steps, and we will get there.”

No one could argue against that.

[to be continued]

After the revelation about the seizure of the van and the discovery of some of Dido’s DNA, the atmosphere at the cottage was very subdued.

Dido knew why John had sent the three women off on a spa visit and why he’d stumped up for a very nice meal. No one wanted to do much of anything after he’d broken the news, especially about the van.

“There is something that both of you should know,” said Joanne, who was smiling in an attempt to lighten the mood.

Her words got everyone’s attention.

“John already knows this, but when I come back from the clinic, I want to be known as Christine or Chrissy for short.”

After a brief silence, Dido stepped forward and gave her a proper hug.
“Well done for taking another step towards your recovery.”

John decided to end things by looking at his watch.

“I think that Joanne and I should leave after breakfast in the morning. She has an appointment with her shrink the day after tomorrow, and we need to get settled into the house that I have rented. I told the agent that we would collect the keys by lunchtime. We are meeting her in Chester… so?”

Dido didn’t object. Trish was on the periphery, and without transport, she was stuck. She looked at Dido with hopeful eyes.

“Sounds good. Trish and I will pack things up once you have left. Then,”

Dido smiled at Trish,
“Then, I’ll take you to the station before I head back to my place in London.”

“What will you do then?” asked Joanne.

“I think I should find myself some legal representation and go to the Operation Chesil team. The last thing I need is to be arrested for nothing. They will need to know how my DNA came to be in the van, or at least what little I can remember from my drug-addled state. I can help them a bit, but as long as they consider me a victim and not a suspect, I’ll be happy.”

John just smiled in a way that told Dido, ‘Yeah, pull the other one’.

“What about you, Trish?”

She sighed.
“Back to my desk at Police HQ. I expect that there will be a pile of cold cases for me to read through and offer my advice on how to solve them at zero cost to the force, now that I’m supposed to be a Criminologist. I tried telling the inspector that I’d only done one year of three and was far from an expert, but as you can expect, it didn’t work.”

She smiled.
“The only upside is that it gives me a wealth of case studies to use in my assignments next year, names and places redacted, naturally.”

Everyone laughed, but it was a strained laugh.

“That’s about it,” said Trish as she finished mopping the kitchen floor late the following morning. John and Joanne had left just after breakfast for the clinic, where Joanne was going to be transformed into Chrissy or at least the first part of the process.

John had engaged the services of a former Detective Sergeant to look after Chrissy during her recuperation. The former DS had been 'glassed' while making an arrest, while he was her Chief Super. As a result, she had needed several operations that were not that dissimilar to what Chrissy was going to go through to repair the damage, and so in John’s eyes, she made a perfect companion while Chrissy recovered from her operations. It also gave John the chance to get the annexe at his home in Essex re-decorated. It needed some professional TLC very badly, having not been touched since before Dido took up residence.

“Thanks for doing that,” said Dido as they finished packing up the house.

The BMW was almost full of food. Thanks to the internet, Dido knew of a homeless shelter in Bangor that would not say no to a few hundred quid’s worth of good food.

“No, thank you for putting up with me these past few days.”

“Putting up with you? Come off it, Trish. For the next few years, we are a partnership, or have you decided to trade me in for a younger model?”

Trish laughed.
“None of the others would put up with me once they find out that I’m the law. Have a guess how many of them have had brushes with the law?”

“Would it not be easier to list those who haven’t got some sort of record, but it shouldn’t matter. What would your inspector say if he knew that you were friends with a hardened crim like me?”

“He knows, and it does not bother him at all as long as you are keeping to your word and going straight besides, that paper I saw you working on before John arrived would make any DCI proud to have authored.”

“And after the last few days? What do you think?”

Trish looked Dido right in the eye.
“Girl, you will do whatever it takes to bring him and his fellow paedo’s down. I’m not going to tell tales unless you get to the point of giving him a dose of what he gave you, even though he and all of them deserve it.”

“Thanks, Trish.”

“Changing the subject a little, how are you going to handle Fox’s ‘Criminal Law and Evidence’ Class next year? I would not like to face a person like that after what he did to you?”

“I don’t know, and that’s the honest truth. If he recognises me, then he’ll do one of two things: either he’ll say nothing and then send in some thugs to make sure that I don’t get any further with my investigations or… run for the hills. To be honest, I don’t think that he will run. He loves the limelight that strutting around the lecture theatre or courtroom gives him. To run would deprive him of a possible last hurrah in No. 1 Court at the Old Bailey. Sitting in the dock is another thing entirely, but he will be the centre of attention, which, from my visits to the Bailey, he craves just like a lead actor.

“That is awful,” said Trish.
“But, also very true.”

“I don’t want to think about that right now. We should get your stuff loaded into the car; otherwise, you won’t get back to Geordie Land tonight.”

Trish looked at the clock on the wall. A nod of her head told Dido that she was right.

[Fifty minutes later at Bangor Railway Station]
“Trish, there is something I need to say,” said Dido rather hesitantly.

Trish smiled.
“About the kiss?”

Dido nodded her head.
“I let my feelings get the better of me. I’m sorry.”

Trish put down her small case, took hold of Dido’s hands and looked her friend in the eye.
“Don’t worry about it. It was unexpected and… nice. But I understand a lot more about you and everything.”

Dido smiled.
“I seem to have a bit of baggage, don’t I?”

“A bit? Loads of it, but it is what makes you, you, isn’t it?”

Dido chuckled.
“I can see those psychology classes have made an impression.”

“No, Dido, you have made an impression. After what you and John, and Joanne told me, I am amazed at how you have not gone to his office and throttled him. God knows, he deserves it, but you haven’t. That is admirable and requires a lot of self-restraint on your part.”

“Does it matter that I lied to you about my background?”

“You had a very good reason to lie to me at the beginning. If you had come to me and said, ‘Hey, I’m Dido, I was born a guy but some trafficker cut my dick off and made me suck his’, I would not have believed you. No one would. You had your reasons for doing it, and now that I know the truth, it does not matter to me one little bit. I… I like you for who you are as a person.”

There was a bit of an uneasy silence between the two. It was broken by Trish’s train emerging from the tunnel at the western end of the station.

“Here’s your train,” said Dido nervously.

“Then let me say goodbye," said Trish.
Without waiting, Trish gave Dido a big hug and kissed her. She only broke off when the train for Manchester Piccadilly came to a stop at the platform.

“Are we good?” asked Trish.

“We are good,” replied Dido.
“Now get on the train or it will go without you. I’ll see you in September…”

Trish gave Dido a small peck on the cheek before picking up her bag and getting on the train.

Dido waved at Trish as the train slowly pulled away. When it had gone, a small tear rolled down her cheek. Having feelings for someone was not what she'd expected when she signed up for her course. Until she had met Trish, she had put all thoughts of even having a romantic relationship buried in her bottom drawer until she'd dealt with her nemesis. But emotions and needs had gotten the better of her. At least it had not ended in disaster.

Dido returned to her car and sat in it for several minutes. Trish was more than a friend, but Dido’s feelings for Trish made her feel vulnerable for the first time since the first night she had spent sleeping rough, aged 14 or something close to it.

As she had expected, the shelter welcomed the food donation with open arms. That pleased Dido as she had made use of several others just like it during her time on the road.

It was with mixed feelings that Dido began her journey back to London. She was angry that she’d let her feelings for someone else come to the surface. She had sworn many years before that doing that was a sign of weakness and to fall for a cop! That just made it worse. But those feelings would just not go away.

Dido was sad because she enjoyed Trish’s company, and she would not see her again for more than six weeks.

Over the weekend, Dido thought long and hard about consulting with a lawyer before going to see the Police. In the end, she decided not to do that. If they came on hard and it looked like she was going to be charged, then she’d call a lawyer that one of her gang of pickpockets had recommended as being a person who would not take no for an answer when it came to dealing with the police.

[The following Monday]
“I’m Dido Pleasance. I believe that Chief Inspector Knowles is expecting me?”

The Officer manning the front desk at the anonymous office block in Southwark that held the team working on Operation Chesil looked Dido up and down before checking a list.

“I don’t see you on my list.”

After a brief sigh of frustration, Dido pulled out a sheet of paper from her purse and handed it to the officer.

“Read that.”

“What is this?”

“It is an email from the Chief Inspector to me confirming my appointment for …”

Dido looked at the clock on the wall behind the officers’ desk.

“Right now?”

Just then, the nearby lift doors opened, and a literal beanpole of a man emerged. He was, as they say, ‘as thin as a rake’ and well over 6ft tall. He came over to the desk.

“Are you Ms Pleasance?”

“That’s me,” replied Dido.

“Chief Inspector Knowles. Pleased to meet you at last.”

“It seems that I’m not on the ‘list’.”

He smiled.
“That’s my fault entirely. I forgot to send the data down to the front desk last night.”

Dido managed a smile.
“If you will come with me, we can get going.”

Dido followed him into the lift and up to the fourth floor. At least he'd taken ownership of his mistake. Many others would have blamed the person at the reception.

[two hours later]
“That is quite a story you have told us,” said the Chief Inspector.

“It is all true, I’m afraid. I know it seems fanciful, but there is one bit of evidence that can’t be made up.”

“What is that?” asked the other officer in the room, Inspector Bland.

“What the traffickers did to me physically.”

“We only have your word for that, don’t we?”

“Here, feast your eyes on these,” said Dido as she pulled a series of photos.

The two officers looked at them with bulging eyes. In all of them, Dido’s face was very visible.

“If you have a woman officer to hand, I’d be only too happy to show her for real.”

Dido took the opportunity to pursue the point.

“I know that at least one other victim with similar mutilations is known to you. What you don’t know is that I know the identity of the person who held us captive for years.”

“What? Do you know who it is? Who is he?” asked the Chief.

“If I tell you, I want a written guarantee that my name will not be revealed until after the bastard has been charged? How about it?”

“That is a tall undertaking. Why do you want that?”

“Isn’t it obvious? He is a person of influence. He had friends in high places, and you must be very aware how the ‘old boy network’ sticks together like leeches when threatened.”

“This person must be powerful, then?” asked the Inspector.

“As I said, I want a written guarantee. Then if something should happen to me, you will know who is responsible.”

The Chief Inspector thought for a moment.

“And if we don’t give you that guarantee? What then?”

“I keep it quiet and continue my very low-key efforts to gather evidence to bring him to justice with enough evidence to hang him… metaphorically speaking, of course…”

“For which, you will need us?”

Dido smiled and shook her head.

“There is always the court of public opinion.”

“The media will crucify you,” stated the Inspector.

“That might be true, but to bring him and his cohorts down, it will be worth it. That said, you can rest assured that the evidence that I have already gathered and will continue to gather will be totally admissible in court. If something were to happen to me, all the evidence gathered so far will be given to you, the mainstream media and also posted on social media.”

“But why are you pursuing this vendetta?” asked the Inspector.

Dido had now taken a dislike to him.

“Put yourself in my position. If you had had your dick and balls removed, pumped full of female hormones and made to have oral and anal sex with the man that kept you in a locked cell that was less than 6ft wide for more than four years and who was also forced to satisfy all his guests at least one of which was a now deceased Chief Super, wouldn’t you want to get even? By the way, the punishment for not making them happy was at least three days without food and then to be fed with stuff that contained double or triple the normal dose of female hormones that would make me puke everywhere. I did as I was told. It is so wrong that I want to get redress for what he did to me.”

Dido didn’t wait for an answer.

“Gentlemen, I think we are done here.”

To reinforce that message, she stood up and headed towards the door.

“We are not done yet,” said the Inspector.

Dido turned around and looked him right in the eye and said,
“Inspector. We are done. If you want to keep me here, then you will have to arrest me, and so far, you have no just cause to do so. If, however, you decide to arrest me, then what will happen, then I will say nothing other than to call my legal representative, who will immediately go to the High Court with a writ of Habeas Corpus. I will also file suit against the Met Police for wrongful arrest. You may not be aware of it, but I am a good friend of one of the architects of the 1984 PACE Act and all the subsequent pieces of legislation. I know them inside out, and as I stand here, probably better than any of you. I could quote almost any section you like from memory. You have no cause to detain me, but please go ahead, and I will make you regret it. That is not a threat, by the way, it is a promise. There is no cause, and I think that you know it.”

“So, Inspector, are we done?”

The Chief Inspector smiled.

“Ms Pleasance, thank you for coming in today and making such a clear and concise statement. I wish all victims were like you. I’ll escort you out.”

In the lift, the Chief said,

“Please excuse the Inspector. He thought that your DNA was clear evidence that you were involved in the crimes, given your somewhat chequered history with the Police. What he does not know, and for good reason, is how much of a help you have been to us in the past. He was not read in on those facts because he is new to the team and has yet to find his place.”

“So, he’s a bit of ‘all mouth and no trousers’ and ‘bark worse than his bite’?”

“Exactly, but don’t tell him that.”
Then, with a small smile on his face he said,
“Give my regards to John. He was my first Inspector after I came out of Hendon.”

“You know him?” feigned Dido.

John had told her about their history during a phone call the previous night.
“When you mentioned the PACE Act, I knew who was behind your plain, no bullshit way of speaking. John Proudfoot put me on the straight and narrow when it comes to being a good cop. Don’t worry about Inspector Bland. He was only present today because the other Inspector on the team is in Court on another case today.”

Dido left the building with mixed feelings. The Chief Inspector seemed to be on her side and agreed that she was a victim. The new Inspector seemed to think otherwise. For a few minutes, she wondered if telling them that she knew who had held her captive had been wise. She’d have to live with the fact that it was too late now. They knew that she knew who did it. She’d have to hope that there were no leaks in the NCA.”

Dido went home to Surrey Keys by Riverboat, still worried about the interview. While it wasn’t the fastest mode of transport, Dido needed some time to think. Once home, she called her friend and mentor, John Proudfoot.

“It was horrible. The DI… Bland was his name was a total bozo. He came into the interview with the sole intention of proving that I was part of the gang. I had to show them the photos of what had happened to me to get him to back off, but even so, I never want to encounter him again.”

Dido listened to John’s calming voice. He’d heard from the Chief Inspector and very much agreed with her opinion of DI Bland.
“John, I would not normally ask this of you, but if you can dig up something on him, then we can keep it in reserve because I get the distinct feeling that, like a bad penny, he will keep popping up in our investigations. The last thing we want to find out is that he is bent and has been tipping the other side off on our plans.”

“There is nothing here that identifies ‘him’ by name or anything. You taught me well in that respect. I have my fail-safes in place just like you taught me.”

“No, everything is safe and not in my possession. They can turn my place over a hundred times, and they will find nothing.”
Dido emphasised that last point, just in case someone had authorised a tap on her phone.

"Suffice to say that if anyone is listening in, any evidence I have that might just possibly contain the name of the man who kept me prisoner and sexually abused me is not in London. It is not even in the country.”

She paused to let anyone listening understand what she’d said. She heard John chuckle before asking her about what she was going to do next.

“Yeah, I have lots of work to do before classes start, but I’ll try to get to see you before they do. Give my regards to everyone.”
‘Everyone’ meant Christine or Chrissy for short. Her new identity was being worked on while she was undergoing plastic surgery on her face. A very different person would appear in a few months, and she would need a perfect backstory for her new life.

How good a life that would ultimately be was still up in the air. She was not like Dido, but Dido had not suffered sexual assault from this gang. That double whammy had affected her more than even John and Dido had initially gauged. Only the limited amount her shrink had told them made them re-evaluate her potential future.

Dido was clear with John when she said,

“While she has made excellent progress, there is no way that she is going anywhere near the witness box if ‘he’ can question her. That will send her back to step one in a flash. It will be down to me to battle it out with him in court.”

Dido didn’t argue with that. Her plan was for her and her alone to confront Fox in court. None of the other victims would be able to stand up to their lives being systematically destroyed by Fox in court.

This is the end of Book 2 (of 5). Book 3 will be arriving later in the year.

It did not take a lot of persuasion for Trish to accept Dido’s offer to share her home for the remainder of their time as students. Now that Trish knew all about Dido’s very chequered history and they had the beginnings of a relationship that was turning out to be more than just good friends, all the awkwardness of the first year between them was a thing of the past.

They decided early on that their relationship should remain a secret from their classmates at university.

Trish began to see a softer side to Dido when she was away from the university, but after speaking to a Police Psychologist in general terms, she was under no illusion that the hard veneer that she presented to the world was pierced. If their relationship was to last, then it was up to her to care for Dido through thick and thin.

That was an easy decision for her. She’d never had feelings for anyone before that were even remotely like those she had for Dido.

The story resumes in early November of Dido’s second year as a student.

Book 3
Chapter 17 – Found Him

[November of Dido’s second year as a student]

Since the academic year had started, Dido and Trish's visits to John Proudfoot’s home were confined to weekends, but this week, she surprised John by visiting on a Wednesday afternoon. Her phone call requesting a pick-up from the station had suggested that she had something important to tell him. She’d avoided even mentioning the subject during the call. That was Dido through and through.

As soon as she was through the front door of his home, she started speaking at a great rate of knots. John just let her speak herself out before saying,

“Slow down, Dido, tell me again how you found out exactly where Fox lives in the Royston area,” said a slightly exasperated John Proudfoot.

“Ok. I’ll start again. One of my classes is, as you know, taught by Fox. That means lectures and tutorials. He makes a point of taking the lectures himself, but for the tutorials, about half of the time, we get his research assistant, a dumb idiot who knows almost nothing about the law, but her daddy runs the barrister chambers where Fox works when he feels like it, so you connect the dots. How she passed her law degree is beyond me. Trish and I know more about criminal law than her, but we have to bite our lips and say nothing.”

“Are you with me so far?”

“Yes,” replied John.

“Every Thursday, we are timetabled to meet for a tutorial in the Law Library, where, when Fox appears, he delights in setting us tasks that are next to impossible to solve within an hour. For example, to find out why a certain verdict was overruled on appeal without using the Internet. We all think that it is his way of telling us that we are second-class citizens regarding the law. Only those wanting to become a lawyer are worth his time and trouble.”

“Ok, got that”, said John.

“Last week, the library was closed for redecoration after a massive water leak from a biology lab on the floor above. Every book has been boxed up, and it is a mess. They hope to have all the repairs and renovations done by the start of next term. Because of the upheaval, several of us had hoped he’d cancel the tutorial. There is no chance of that. He rescheduled the tutorial for Friday at two in the afternoon in his own office, as his research assistant was taking her driving test. The slave driver extraordinaire insisted that we not only have to attend in person, but we must do an extra assignment just for the class to be submitted by midnight on Monday. It is almost as if he blames us for the leak…”

“Ouch.”

“So, Friday comes along and our tutorial group all troop into his office. He’s on the phone with some scumbag client called Marmaduke Hardy. I looked him up after the class. Not a nice guy and, AFAIK, is near the top of Interpol’s ‘Most Wanted’ list.”

John grinned.
“Have you called Crimestoppers on him yet? If Hardy is not under arrest, there should be no reason for him to be on the phone with him, but how did you know that?”

“Fox took a picture of a document on his desk using the rear camera on his phone. That’s when I saw the caller ID name.”

John shook his head. Once again, Dido’s powers of observation had surprised him.

“Anyway, he motioned to us to all sit down on the other side of his desk from him while he hastily wrapped up the call. I sat at the end of his desk and put my bag on the floor next to a wastepaper bin. I could not help seeing a letter with the word ‘Royston’ in the address partially crumpled up in the bin.”

“So, you stole it from under his nose?”

Dido laughed.

“Do you honestly think that I am that stupid? Nah, I just took a photo of it. I never touched the letter or the bin, so no DNA or Fingerprints. I made it appear that I was getting something from my bag with my phone in my hand. In reality, I was getting my notebook, so I didn’t lie because he is frigging brilliant at picking up even the slightest porky pie. I don’t think that I was discovered.”

John laughed.
“Teaching you to be a Criminologist was a bad idea. Now you are a super crim!”

“No criminality involved. The evidence was in plain sight, so no search warrant was needed as he invited me and all the others into his office. I have to admit that being a dip has given me some skills at controlling my emotions in tense situations.”

“As I was saying… super crim…” said a grinning John.

“Then what?”

“After the tutorial, I sent the photo to an old friend of mine, and she did a ride-by of the address over the weekend. She sent me the photos from her helmet cam. It is the place, all right.”

“Are you sure about that? By the way, what is a helmet cam?”

“John… Sometimes, you can be as thick as three short planks…”
He smiled.

“Was she sussed out during this ‘ride by’, and is it the right place?”

“Yes, it is the right place and no to being sussed out.”

John didn’t look convinced, so Dido expanded her explanation.

“Firstly, a helmet cam is what a lot of cyclists use in case they are in an accident. It fixes to the top of her cycling helmet. Secondly, she didn’t stop and only did one run up the lane. As she was on a racing bike and the lane that runs past the property is on a route used by lots of cyclists because of the lack of heavy traffic, I highly doubt that she was discovered.”

“Then…” she added,
“Dove is one of my old team of dippers. She rides a bike all the time, so my suggestion of a little trip out to Royston was not a problem for her. She went yesterday with all the Lycra gear and everything. She sent me a video of her ride past the house late last night.”

“How do you know all that? No trying to pull the wool over my eyes now?”

Dido laughed.
“As if I could do that, eh?”

“No, I used a VPN to hide my searches and googled the name of the lane. One of the results was a picture of the local cycling club using it at weekends. Then I thought of Dove, and it worked.”

“Ok, so she wasn’t discovered. How do you know that it is the right place?”

“Because the helmet cam was lucky enough to pick up Marcus Fox carrying what looked like shopping bags of food from a car into the house.”

John thought for several seconds.

“Here, let me show you,” suggested Dido as she sensed his hesitation.

Without waiting, she pulled her laptop out of her bag and called up the recording.

Upon viewing the recording, John said,
“Ok, I’ll accept that the information was obtained legally and verified without being discovered. For a moment in your story, I wondered if you ‘dipped’ his pocket.”

Dido grinned.
“I did think about it, but decided against it for one reason.”

“You would get caught?”

“Nope. He uses a man-bag for all his stuff. It hangs from a loop on his belt. I might be good as a ‘dipper’, but to even try to take that would be madness.”

“Could you not just cut the strap?”

Dido shook her head.
“He’s reinforced the strap with steel wire. You have to look hard, but the leather has worn through in a couple of places, exposing the wire. Next to impossible to dip, I’m afraid. After seeing him at the seeing him at the university for the first time, with the bag dangling over his privates, I remembered that he always made a show about taking it off if he was going to bum-fuck me.”

“That man is psycho.”

“That we can agree on.”

Dido gave John the Ordnance Survey map of the area with the location of the target location marked on it.

“Dido, promise me one thing…”

She smiled;
“I know, I know. Don’t do anything until you have had time to think about things?”

“Yes. You know me too well…”

“No, John. Now that we have the location, we can plan the next steps in our timeframe and no one else’s. I get the feeling that you have been thinking about this day for some time. That is how you do things. I also know that if that is the case, you will tell me in your own good time. That’s fine by me. I have a lot of work to do before the end of term, and it will only increase after Christmas.”

“Where is that petulant teenager who tried to break into my car?”

“Long gone, thanks to your mentoring and infinite wisdom,” said Dido with a grin on her face.

John shook his head.
“What sort of she-devil have I let loose on the world?”

Both of them laughed.

John did indeed have an idea about verifying the accuracy of the sighting. One of his former compatriots in the Met Police had been very creative when setting up a surveillance operation on a suspect’s home just before he retired. Getting a warrant for a phone tap would be next to impossible due to the suspect’s connections in society and, in particular, his reputation in the legal profession as someone you don’t mess with. Then, none of his team were exactly experts in covert surveillance outside the confines of the capital. The crimes that the target was suspected of committing at that moment were not enough to call in a dedicated team of officers to watch the property, which would be questioned because of the cost. There was also a risk that the suspect could have been tipped off about the operation.

That particular officer had a brother who was a former army officer. The brother knew about some former Army special forces personnel who were at a loose end. He had used them to watch the property for a week. The cost to the force was a fraction of what it would have been when using police officers. They would be used to gather more information that could help improve their chances of getting a search warrant. That worked, and as a result, even the bean counters went away happy. Moreover, because the team never trespassed onto the property of the suspect, all the evidence that they obtained was legal and admissible in court, although none of them would testify in open court because of the risk of identification by people who wanted to kill them, but those hurdles could be overcome if needed.

The video evidence produced by the team was enough to take the surveillance to another level. It was this group of former servicemen that John had in mind for this task.

A few hours of investigation and a visit to Royston in his Cortina on his way for an afternoon at the Imperial War Museum at nearby Duxford gave John the perfect base for their operations. His visit confirmed that a public footpath ran along one side of Fox’s property. Half a mile along the path, it bordered another property that was available for letting. Using the path as a means of access, it might be possible to conduct the operation without even setting foot on his property and therefore avoiding any illegality. Slowly, a plan was coming together.

Dido, meantime, was trying hard not to think about the problems that John was grappling with and failing miserably. She had a paper to submit to Fox himself by midnight on Monday, and so far, all she had was a blank sheet of paper to show for all her efforts. In desperation, she turned to a thing she hated: Google. After an hour, she had an idea for the paper. Professor Fox was known to use several search engines and other tools to check for plagiarism. Any hint of that, and he’d fail the paper and not accept any excuses.

After a fairly sleepless night, she came up with a plan that she hoped would not trigger Fox’s plagiarism detector.
“One day, Fox and your goose will be well and truly cooked,” she muttered to herself as she began to write the paper.

In the background, John had the area around Fox’s home surveyed by an associate who loved a challenge when it came to walking obscure footpaths. She would take the local council to task if she found a path blocked, especially with barbed wire. The report he received a week later verified that the public bridleway that ran along one boundary of the property was just about passable. It said that it was not used very much in the winter but seemed to be a favourite for mountain bikers in the drier months of the year.

The photos attached to the report indicated that it would be ideal for some covert surveillance, and importantly, there were two locations on the path that gave a good view of Fox’s house with very little chance of discovery. All of this was confirmed by Google Earth, as was the layout of the driveway and paths on the property. All of this would come in useful later in the operation.

John then took the unprecedented step of renting the nearby property for three months. He dithered and dithered before taking the plunge, but the more he thought about it, the more he understood that it was the right thing to do. While the operation should not take that long, three months was the minimum that the agent would let the property for. He reasoned that if Fox was not under arrest by early in the new year, then something was badly amiss with the British system of justice.

Once the deal was done and dusted, he made contact with the leader of the small group of veterans who would be conducting the actual surveillance. He discovered that they were going to be wrapping up a job in four weeks and could start a week after that. That fitted in with his plans, so John hired them for four weeks with an optional two-week extension. He regarded it as money well spent if it led to the arrest of Fox.

Once all the details were ironed out, he sent a text to Dido,

“Plans in place for round-the-clock obo of the Fox’s den, so keep well away for next eight to ten weeks, understood?”

Dido replied,
“Understood.”

Normally, Dido would have questioned John about his plans, but the workload that she and Trish were dealing with meant that they had little time to spare for what Dido called ‘the other project’.

Trish admired Dido’s self-restraint on the matter. If she were in Dido’s shoes, she would have been chomping at the bit to go in and give Fox a good seeing, too. While that was not the sort of attitude a serving police officer should show, now that she knew what had been done to her, Chrissy and probably others would test anyone when it came to getting even for his past crimes.

There wasn’t much time to think about the Fox’s lair due to the extra work that Fox had dumped on them at short notice. Neither of them gave up, and by early Sunday afternoon, both of them had completed their assignments. Fox, being a sadistic bastard in both of his lives, had given each of his criminology students a similar but different assignment. That was his way of ensuring that there was no working together as a team. They shared their work so that a pair of fresh eyes could check for obvious errors as well as cross-check all references and facts that were cited.

Fox used his two PhD students to do the donkey work with the marking. If the submission passed their checks, then and only then would he read them. Both of them found small errors which were easily corrected.

With that done, Trish suggested,
“Shall we go out for a late Sunday Lunch?”

Dido responded with a big sigh.

“I take it that you are a ‘no’ then?”

“It’s not that. I just don’t feel like going very far.”

Trish looked out of the window at the river. The four masts of the ‘Cutty Sark’ were visible along the river to her right. Beyond that, the Greenwich Observatory, perched on top of a hill, gave her an idea.

“Why don’t we take the riverboat to Greenwich? Isn’t there a pub right by the stop near the naval college?”

Dido raised an eyebrow at her friend.

“That is an idea that I can go along with. I wasn’t thinking about going downriver.”

“Shall we go then?”

“Yeah, why not? Have you sent your assignment to Fox yet?” asked Dido.

“Not yet. I wanted to give it one more read-through later. You?”

“Mine went half an hour ago. It isn’t very good, but it will have to do.”

Neither of them was expecting good news when they joined the rest of their group for the next tutorial with Fox. They came out of the session feeling a lot better. Two of their class had been late submitting their assignments and had not only been given an ‘F’ but a verbal haranguing that went on for more than ten minutes from the man himself.

Trish wondered if that was a taster of what Dido was likely to face when she faced him in court. If it was, then she hoped that Dido would be able to withstand his barrage. Both students at the end of his tirade looked shell-shocked.

Dido sat quietly at the back as she usually did, hoping to keep her reactions to his verbal jabs to herself. She’d been on the wrong end of them more times than any of those around her could imagine in their wildest nightmares. At least in the class, they were verbal threats, unlike those she received while a prisoner in his cellar.

Trish, as was now the norm, kept an eye on Dido. She was worried that one of the days, she’d lose it and tell the world what an ogre this man was and throw all of the hard work that she’d done towards bringing him to justice, flushed straight down the drain.

Once they’d left Fox to gloat about their shortcomings to his research assistant, Trish took Dido to one side.
“I was worried that you would lose it in there and give him a broadside.”

Dido smiled.
“It did cross my mind. At least we didn’t get an ‘F’ for our work.”

“True, but the bastard downgraded our papers because we got a reference wrong. We didn’t deserve a ‘C-‘.”

Dido managed a smile.
“Do you want to join the ‘kick Fox where it hurts’ team?”

Trish grinned.
“Count me in. He is a sadist first class.”

Dido gave her best friend a big hug.

They were closer than ever, thanks to their common enemy, Fox.

A few days later, Dido was summoned by John to a meeting at his house for the following Friday evening. Dido invited Trish along without even clearing it with John. As far as she was concerned, Trish was part of the team after their brief trip to North Wales in the summer.

John, while initially surprised at Trish being with Dido as he picked them up from the station, he could see right away that together, they were fast becoming an inseparable team and that as a team, they were stronger together rather than as individuals.

After an excellent dinner that had been prepared by Chrissy, the four sat in the now-cleared dining room.

“Trish, what I’m about to propose is not exactly legal, so if you want to duck out now, then no one here will hold it against you. I am talking to you, Trish.”

“I’m here for the duration. If this illegality involves Fox and brings us one step closer towards bringing him to trial, then I’m in,” replied Trish without any hesitation.

John smiled and nodded his head.

“Now that we know where his country abode is, and for the past four weeks, I have had a team of ex-servicemen watching the place. The watchers are not on his property. Thanks to a public bridleway that runs along one boundary of his home, they have been able to record all the comings and goings and not set one foot on his property. It is all perfectly legal, and even Fox could not get that evidence thrown out on a technicality.”

John fished out a sheet of paper. It was a copy of a large-scale map of the area around Fox’s home.
Then, he produced a detailed log that had been produced by the team of watchers.

“As you can see from the log, and this backs up what both Dido and Chrissy have said, he and his son are creatures of habit for the moment. As it is term time, Fox himself spends three or four nights a week at his apartment in the Barbican development. Fox Junior, as both Chrissy and Dido can testify, looks after the girls during the week apart from Wednesdays. On that day, he goes AWOL. I say AWOL, but one of my watchers took it upon himself to follow him over three different Wednesdays. He is a creature of habit. On two of those days, he ends up at a property in Stevenage that is owned by this mysterious ‘Canal Properties and Investments’ from Panama City. He stays for at least three hours before returning to the house. My source says that there is a young woman with a 2-3-year-old child living at the address. No guesses as to who the father is.”

“As for the other week, he drives to Stevenage and then takes the train into London and visits a prostitute at one of the top hotels in the West End. He gets the last or next-to-last train home.”

John let that sink in before continuing.

“What I’m going to propose is that one Wednesday in the not-too-distant future, two of you go and take a look-see inside the cellar while Fox Junior is away. Look, see and don’t even think about touching anything or rescuing the latest prisoner. He, as in Fox, would do a runner the moment he found out that another of his captives had escaped due to the negligence of his idiot son. What we want is information. The more, the better. When we get it, our next step is to take it to the right people and obtain a proper… as in 100% legal search warrant and then and only then, go in with all the resources to get him and his son into custody and his latest victim medical treatment. Am I clear on that?”

None of the three women could find fault with John’s proposal.

“Because Dido and Chrissy have been held captive by Fox, I want them to go inside. No jury in the land would convict them of B&E given their history.”

Dido was ready to go in right there and then. Chrissy was a different kettle of fish.

“Chrissy,” said Dido in a soft voice.
“He will not be there, and I’ll be at your side the whole time.”

“Dido is right, Chrissy. One of my team of watchers will confirm his arrival at the property in Stevenage. Once Fox Junior is there, we can go in.”

“Ok,” said a very hesitant Chrissy.

“Chrissy,” said Dido softly.
“I’ll be there with you all the way. John’s plan means that neither of them will be there. All you need to do is photograph everything. The more evidence we can collect, the better chance John has of persuading the right people to issue a search warrant for both of them.”

“I know all that, but… Going back there gives me the shakes.”

She was right. Chrissy was visibly shaking.
“Why are you so calm?” she asked Dido.

“I’m calm because of the hours that John spent talking me into doing what I’m doing to get even with Fox. Yes, I could have just come up behind him on the street and shoved a blade into his back. That would have ended it for him and probably me as well. This way, I get to face him down in court.”

“But… How can you even bear to be in the same room as him?”

“It wasn’t easy at first, but I got there. Having a clear goal in mind keeps me sane and stops me from cutting his dick off and making him eat it in public. Believe me, it is hard, but with every tutorial I attend, it gets a bit easier. I will enjoy telling the jury what a sadist, pervert and paedophile he is. I have the evidence that will make it impossible for the jury to find him not guilty.”

Dido looked at Trish and smiled.
“Besides, I have Trish watching over me while we are at university. She… she will stop me doing anything silly, won’t you, Trish?”

“I will if I can,” she replied, smiling.
Her eyes said, ‘Doing that might be difficult, but I will try’.

“What? What do you have on him that will ensure that he gets found guilty?” asked Chrissy, looking puzzled.

Dido leaned over and whispered into Chrissy’s ear. Chrissy managed a smile.

“Ok,” she said.
“I’ll give it a go.”

John looked at Dido, who seemed satisfied. Trish had watched the whole thing go down without commenting. She wasn’t sure that Chrissy was strong enough to return to the room where so much evil had been done to her. Dido was a very different person. She was getting an idea about how much her adult character and persona had been influenced by John Proudfoot. In her mind, that was not a bad thing.

[5th December]

John Proudfoot’s plan to use some former servicemen to observe the comings and goings at Fox’s home for almost a month had paid off in ways he never expected. Not only did the team record the habits of Fox and his son Marcus, but they also photographed the people ‘Fox & Son’ entertained at the weekends.

Those photographs would be useful when the time came to round up the other paedophiles in Fox’s sphere of influence. John knew from a case that he’d only been involved with on the periphery that getting any of those men to testify would be next to impossible. Even if they turned ‘Queens Evidence’, their public lives would be over. The Home Secretary at the time would probably decide to let the men admit to their crimes and then withdraw from public life. Politicians are all about never admitting their mistakes. It is all the fault of someone else, which is why the general public holds them in such contempt.

John wondered if the term ‘spending more time with my family’ was coined around that time. Whatever decision they made, their careers were over, but there was their family to think of in many cases. Their wives/partners and especially children did not need the publicity of a public admittance or trial. The conditions of their retirement from public life included a clause that if they were arrested for even the slightest offence that carried a jail term, then it was game over for them. Their past crimes and, importantly, their signed confession would be used against them in a court of law, and they would be sent down for a long time. As far as John was aware, this ‘Sword of Damocles’ that was hanging over them had been 100% successful. That sword would remain in place until the day that they would pass away.

John was in no doubt as he looked at their photographs that these sex offenders would try to take the same route, but having sixteen different people all seek to spend more time with their family within a few weeks or months would arouse a lot of suspicion in the media. Keeping just half of them secret would be difficult, but there were at least sixteen and probably many more involved, given how long Fox had been holding hostages.

The worst bit for John was that two of them were serving Police Officers. They were part of the ‘top brass’ of the Met Police. He’d worked alongside both of them over the years. Seeing them in the ‘rogues gallery’ hurt John deeply. To him, they had betrayed the force, their oath of office and the public for which they had served for decades.

One thing was certain about the photos. Whilst there was no direct evidence of them abusing a child, one leak of their name after Fox had been arrested would ruin their lives, but could hurt the case. With that in mind, John decided to keep those photos very private. He took them into the city and added them to the contents of his safe deposit box. They would stay there until it was an appropriate time to release them to the world.

Armed with all the data about the comings and goings of the Fox home, John began to plan the details of the next step, where Dido and Chrissy would break into the house when there was no one at home.

While this was very much a crime, John was certain that no one from the CPS would dare charge a victim of Fox with breaking into Fox’s home to obtain photographic evidence of his crimes. Public opinion would be 100% against the CPS when it got out, as it surely would. John would make sure of that himself, even if he was up against a charge of conspiracy to commit a robbery.

They already knew that Marcus Fox worked from home and went missing on Wednesdays. Both Dido and Chrissy confirmed this habit of going AWOL one evening a week, and sometimes, he would not return until the morning. They also confirmed that they would often be given something in their food that would be guaranteed to knock them out for 12-14 hours. Comatose captives can cause no trouble. Both of them had faked swallowing their pills on more than one occasion. That’s how they knew about his variable return times.

Those little details were uppermost in John’s planning. He remembered the first operation he had planned. It all went wrong until a slice of luck meant that he came out of it on top. He never forgot his lack of a ‘Plan B’. His backup for this operation was for Trish to step in as needed.

That Wednesday evening, Dido, Chrissy and Trish were at John’s home, going over the fine details for a visit to Fox’s cellar. Chrissy was very nervous, but Dido knew that Trish would step up and take her place if needed, even if she accidentally left some DNA behind. The presence of Dido’s and Chrissy’s DNA could easily be explained, so John insisted that everyone was fully covered from head to foot. They were not quite wearing crime scene PPE, but something very close to it.

The plan was to break in, get into the cellar and photograph everything before leaving the place just as they’d found it. Nothing physical was to be removed or touched. They would be double-gloved, just like a doctor who might be treating an HIV-positive patient. John was all about minimising the risk to everyone.

Once it was all agreed, John said,

“We are a go for next Wednesday. There will be no moonlight even if the sky is clear.”

[The following Tuesday]

John addressed the three women at his home.
“This is just a run-through of all the kit for tomorrow. This is the time to find out if nothing fits or does not work properly.”

No one objected to the aim of the exercise.

“I think that these will be useful,” said John as he opened a box and brought out three body camera systems.

“Put these on, and when you go inside, we’ll have a definitive recording of what you see. It will also stop that bastard QC from trying to say they you planted evidence.”

“He won’t get far with the cells. They are built into the basement,” said Chrissy.

John shook his head.
“All he needs is to cast doubt on just one item, and the jury will downgrade the rest in importance. I’ve seen him in action more times than I care to remember. I know how he operates. Then, if just a couple of jurors start to doubt what they have seen with their own eyes, the result could be that he walks free. The stink from the case would mean he’d lose both his legal and educational careers, but he’d still be a free man and that, ladies, is just not in our plan for him.”

“John is right,” said Trish.
“We have to record everything, but it is imperative that whoever gets into the house, we must not touch anything, even if you are wearing double gloves. That includes rescuing anyone in the cells. Those images will be what it takes to get the cavalry to come galloping over the hill.”

“Put these on. That way, you will be identical”

John handed out three dark blue boiler suits, three black balaclavas and matching latex gloves. Those would go over the other protective gear that they would be wearing. He was leaving nothing to chance, or so he hoped.

“Duct tape your sleeves and the trouser bottoms to your boots, which must be washed before putting them on, gloved or course. We don’t want any DNA in the form of skin cells to be left behind. While both of you were held there, any DNA that you left behind will have aged. The latest analysis tools can show how old DNA is and we don’t want that now do we?”

No one argued against John’s plan. It all made sense. Minimise the risk at all costs.

[The next day.]

Dido and Trish travelled to John’s home in the early afternoon by a non-standard route just in case they were being followed. Dido had taken the Overground from Liverpool Street to White Hart Lane, where John picked her up at the rear entrance to the station, which was well away from the hustle and bustle of Tottenham High Road. Trish was already in the car, having travelled by national rail and then tube to Seven Sisters.

Trish was going along as backup and to keep watch outside just in case Chrissy could not go through with going into the house.

There was a distinct air of nervousness around the kitchen table as the four of them ate dinner. John had seen it before when leading an operation while in the Police, but for the three women, it was a new experience. The state of nervousness even applied to Trish, who, as a serving Police Officer, had never been involved with an operation anything even remotely like this one. Most of her colleagues teased her about not being able to kick in a door when they all knew very well that they had a lovely big red tool for that job. Still, as a relative newbie to the force, she was spared the adrenaline rush that going on an operation gave you. She was nervous for other reasons. If it emerged that she’d gone inside the house, then her career as an officer could be over if it got out. As she got dressed, Trish decided that this was more important than being a lowly Detective in the police.

The three women were soon fully equipped for the operation, including the important night vision goggles that John had managed to procure from somewhere.

“You have two hours. The house is currently dark, so wear the goggles all the time if possible. If there is an occupant of the cell in the cellar who is not sedated, just try to keep them quiet.”

Dido was not looking forward to dealing with a prisoner. She knew that if she had found strange people looking like bad characters from Dr Who in the cellar, she would have been demanding that they release her immediately. Their plan was not to disturb anything. Having to extract an irate child in silence was not something she was looking forward to, even if it would have been what she wanted when she was the captive.

John had come up trumps once the location of ‘the house’ had been verified. The small team of ex-servicemen he’d hired for the job were just pleased to be using the skills that the British taxpayer had paid for them to learn. Any job like this was better for them and most any other conventional job in civvy-street.

Whilst he was not asking them to do anything very illegal, they had the skills to make the search of the house a lot easier for those who were going to go inside, but John had forbidden that. The fewer who knew what was going on in the cellar at this stage, the better.

“Good luck, ladies,” said John as he prepared to drop them off near the target.
“Thanks, John,” said a very nervous Chrissie.

The three women melted into the darkness while they waited for John to get clear. After a couple of minutes, they moved silently off. Their night vision glasses made moving around much easier than without.

Five minutes of walking along a footpath that went close to the target house brought them to their rendezvous point. A figure emerged from the undergrowth to meet them. This was one of the ‘friends of a friend’ that John Proudfoot had enlisted to back up the three women in their operation.

In a voice hardly above a whisper, he said,
“The house is quiet. A young man left the premises in a car about an hour ago. The only light seems to be coming from the cellar. I received a text a few minutes ago that the man is at the house in Stevenage. We are all clear.”

Dido was about to answer him, but stopped herself just in time. She remembered a lecture on the behaviour of suspects in police custody just in time. Stop talking if you even feel as nervous as hell.

“Are you ready?” asked the man who was like them dressed in black.

“We are,” said a slightly nervous Trish.

“Good. Follow me. There is a path to the house that won’t leave a trail over the grass. There is a dew forming, and we don’t want to leave tracks on the grass as they will be there for all to see come daylight.”

“Put these on until you are about to step into the house. Take them off and leave them outside. Then bring them back with you.”

He handed them each a pair of disposable overshoes and a stiff brush.
“We don’t want you leaving muddy prints all over the hallway. That would be a huge giveaway that someone has been in the house.”

No one answered him, but they put the covers over their shoes after helping each other brush off any debris from the soles of their boots.

They silently followed him along a path through a small copse. This was the public footpath that ran along one boundary of the property. He led them to a barbed wire fence. A blanket or something like it had been laid over it just to help the women get over without impaling themselves.

Once they were over the fence and onto the grounds of the house, the man in black led them around the edge to the left until they were near the rear of the building, where he slowed to a stop.

“I’m sure that you can see the path. Stay on it and go around the other side of the house to your left. If you go right, the path turns to gravel, which makes noise, and we don’t want that. Stay off the front drive as it is also covered in gravel.”

He looked at the three women for a second or so before saying,
“I’ll wait here for up to two hours. Beyond that, you will have to make your way back. So good luck and good hunting.”

Dido took a deep breath and took the lead for all of two strides. Then Trish got her brain going and took over.

The smell of old lavender mixed with cat shit was prevalent as they approached the front door. After removing their disposable overshoes, they were ready to go once Dido had the door open.

“Turn your back, Trish,” whispered Dido.

They’d discussed how Trish would handle a bit of ‘Breaking and Entering’. They’d agreed that if she didn’t see the ‘Breaking’ part, she would be happy. It was a minor point, but one where Trish could honestly say that she didn’t see Dido pick the lock.

Dido knelt and pulled out her lockpicking kit. She hoped that the hours of practice that John Proudfoot had made her do with this one purpose in mind would come to fruition.

The lock was pretty old, and using her tools, she determined that it was just a single lever action. The style fitted in with the large 1930’s Oak front door. In less than a minute, it clicked open.

“After you, Chrissy,” said Dido.

Their plan was for Trish to stand watch, but Chrissy didn’t move.
“Chrissy?” whispered Dido.

“Sorry. I just can’t go in… in that place. The smell is just too much for me.”

There was a long moment of silence between the three women.

“I’ll go,” said Trish.
“Chrissy, are you ok standing watch?”

“I… I think so.”

Dido hugged Chrissy before heading into the house, followed by Trish.

“Trish, we need to find the door to the cellar. It can’t be far.”

“There it is,” whispered Trish as she pointed to a door with a combination lock.

The only sound was of a clock ticking gently somewhere in the house. Dido breathed slowly and deeply to slow her heart before tackling the lock on the door to the cellar.

Dido knelt once again and proceeded to open the combination. This lock would deter the casual thief, but for someone who had learned from two master safecrackers, this particular lock type was only rated adequate by her teachers. To Dido, this was the sort of lock that was sold to the general public as a defence against opportunist robbers. Any experienced thief would know how to crack this sort of lock in their sleep. Dido hoped that her teachers had been right.

With her best ear on the lock separated by a paper towel, she twirled the dial left and right. In under three minutes, the lock was opened with an audible click.

Trish had stood back, watching an expert at work. She wondered what more hidden talents Dido had up her sleeve. For someone who had been through what she had, she was showing remarkable control over her emotions. Then she understood the training that John had been giving her for years. Controlling her emotions was commonplace for Dido, and opening a lock like this was just a demonstration of that skill.

Dido took a pen from her jacket and wrote a number on a piece of tape fixed to the back of her left hand. This was the position of the combination lock dial before she had started to crack the code. She would return the dial to the same spot when they left the building. This was just one of the small details that her teachers had insisted that she remember to do when cracking a combination lock. Avoiding or at least delaying detection of the crime was part of the art of robbery. The longer it was before the crime was detected, the greater the chance that the thief could offload the goods at a good price. They were not going to remove anything physical from Fox’s house, just information and images.

Dido led the way down the stairs. For her, the slightly damp smell brought back so many memories, one of which was that they had still not fixed the leaking pipe in the shower cubicle.

At the bottom, there was another door. A slit of light showed under it. Dido drew Trish’s attention to the light. Both of them switched off their night vision goggles and flipped them up before Dido opened the door.

Dido shuddered as she saw the room that had been her world for almost 1500 days. Right in front of them were three cells, just like the ones you see in so many Westerns. Two of them were occupied. Trish’s first instinct was to release them, but Dido put her hand on her friend’s arm to stop her. Two of the cells had been added since her escape. That threw her for a moment or two.

“Remember, look only,” whispered Trish.

Trish’s words brought Dido back to the here and now. Her logical mind kicked back in with a vengeance.

Dido pointed to a video camera that was mounted on the wall above the door. The little red light was not on. It was not working. Dido breathed a sigh of relief. If it had been recording, then their efforts to obtain information would be severely constrained.

Trish nodded her head and pulled her camera out of her jacket. Dido did the same.

For the next few minutes, they moved around the cellar, taking as many photos as they could. Neither of the occupants of the cells moved.

Trish moved close to Dido and whispered.
“It appears that we are in luck. They are sound asleep.”

“Marcus must have slipped them something. It sucks because the crap that he uses leaves you with a huge hangover in the morning.”

Trish refrained from commenting. Seeing just where her friend had been held captive for years made her sick to the stomach. There was only so much that she could take, so she looked around for something else to photograph.

“What’s in there?” she whispered as she pointed to a room off to their right.

“I don’t know. It wasn’t there when I was last here,” said Dido.

“Wanna take a look?” asked Trish.

Dido looked at her watch.
“We have an hour and thirty minutes of our time left, so yeah.”

They’d planned to spend up to an hour inside the house just to make sure that their guide was there when they returned.

“Ok.”

Trish led the way and opened the door. As soon as she saw what was in the room, she let out an audible gasp. Both turned to look at the two females. Neither of them moved.

Dido moved into the room and said two words as her head torch illuminated the wall.
“Fucking hell!”

On the walls were crime scene photos of sex crimes. Dido studied each one in turn while Trish started taking photos. She’d got to the fourth set when she repeated her words a few minutes before.
“Fucking hell,” said Dido again as she pointed to one set of photos.

That second outburst of swearing got Trish’s attention.
“That’s Chrissy’s crime scene. How the fuck did they get them?”

Trish stopped taking photos and looked in detail at the piles of folders on the desks that lined the walls.
“These are copies of the real Police case files. This sucks big time,” said Trish.

“What do we do now?” asked Dido.

“Record everything. I mean every little detail.”

“Gotcha.”

The two women spent almost twenty minutes photographing the contents of the room. Neither of them said a word. The photos made them sick to their stomach. The depravity of the scenes shocked even Dido, who had spent so much time in the cellar. Both of them felt relieved that Chrissy had declined to enter the house. She would have totally freaked out when she saw the images of her crime scene in front of her.

Dido finished first and looked at her watch. She tapped Trish on the arm, waved the watch in front of her face and pointed upwards.

“Ok. Just a couple more, and I’m done.”

Trish took the last of the photos of the documents and the first sheet inside them before carefully replacing them where they’d come from. Then she gave Dido a nod of her head.

Dido followed Trish out of the room, closing the door behind her. At the bottom of the stairs, she turned and blew a kiss to each of the prisoners. It wasn’t much, but it would have to do… for the time being.

She closed the door behind her, and after flipping on her night vision glasses, she went up the stairs behind Trish.

At the top of the stairs, Dido closed the door and locked it again. Her final act was to set the combination dial to the number that she’d written on her hand.

Trish leaned over and whispered into Dido’s ear.
“Best not say a word about the room to Chrissy until John has seen the photos.”

Dido nodded. It made sense.

At the front door, they met up with Chrissy, who gave both of them a hug. Dido broke off to lock the front door and pick up the disposable shoe covers that they had worn to get to the house. After another nod of her head, the trio set off around the back of the house to where the ‘man in black’ was waiting.

The ‘man in black’ was very much a man of few words. All he said was,
“Follow me.”

Dido gave a mental sigh of relief once they’d climbed back over the barbed wire fence.
“Follow the path, and you will get back to the road. I’ll clear up here,” said their guide.

The trio took their time, even if their hearts were racing and followed the path and soon reached the road where Dido took out her phone after removing her night vision glasses. The phone had been kept in an RF-blocking bag since she had left John’s home to avoid tracking. She powered it up and waited until she found the network.

Then, she sent a text to John Proudfoot.
“Running Late.”

That was their code word for ‘come and pick us up’. Then she powered it down and put it back in the bag.

A little over seven minutes later, a car approached. It flashed its lights as it drew near.
The three women piled into the back, and all three breathed a huge sigh of relief.
No one said anything. Their adrenaline levels were far too high for anything other than gibberish to come out of their mouths.

Once they were back at John’s home, he poured each one of the three a large scotch. Trish downed it in one, but Chrissy settled for a beer. Dido headed for the kitchen and put the kettle on. John’s special blend of green tea was her drink of choice. She wanted to keep a clear head while she tried to process what they’d found.

John was very patient. He knew from the body language of Trish and Dido that they’d found a lot of evidence. He guessed that it was hard for them to process at the moment. They’d give it up in their own good time.

Dido returned to the others with two large mugs of tea. She handed one to John before saying,
“We found a lot more than we bargained for. There is some serious shit going on in that house.”

“I agree,” said Trish.
“There has to be a major leak inside the NCA.”

“Ok, stop right there. Take me through what happened from the time that you got to the front door. Just verbally. Then we can look at the photos,” said John in an attempt to stop the floodgates of information from overwhelming him.”

Over the next hour, Trish and Dido described in excruciating detail what they had found. They didn’t leave out anything. Chrissy sat and listened with her eyes closed. Her knuckles went white when Trish described the case files for the attack on Chrissy. Dido took Crissy’s hand and tried to comfort her.

John stayed silent throughout their description. He listened intently and made a few notes on a legal pad. His years of policing had taught him to show lots of patience when letting people speak. Even the smallest bit of information could lead to solving the crime.

When they’d finished, he still didn’t say anything, but instead, he consulted his notes.

His first words were,
“And you recorded this on camera?”

“We did. Do you want to see them?”

“Not at the moment. What I want you to do is write it all down as if you were making a statement. Trish, I know that this might be difficult for you, so if you don’t want to do it, I will understand.”

“John, I will gladly do it. What I saw tonight goes way beyond what I expected, and the people responsible for this have to be brought to justice. If doing so means that I lose my job, then so be it.”

John smiled.
“Good for you.”

Then he added,
“Before you start, make four copies of your photos. Dido, do you know where my computer is? Use it and upload them all to your private cloud, just in case. We have to be prepared to tell this story more than once in the next 24 or 36 hours.”

Dido left the room to start the copying.
“What can I do?” asked Chrissie.

“Go to bed, and don’t feel bad for not going into the house. It was always a risk, and we had Trish as backup, just in case. Your rehab is still ongoing. Try to get some sleep, as we will have a busy day tomorrow.”

“Thanks, John.”

A few minutes later, Chrissie went upstairs to bed. John closed the door behind her, but didn’t talk about his plans for later that day. He wanted their statements down first, while it was fresh in their minds. Besides, he needed to think carefully about who he contacted. The revelations about the photos and copies of police records troubled him greatly. There was at least one co-conspirator deep inside the fledgling National Crime Agency. This was just about the last thing that they needed. He had to start at the top and call in most of the favours that he was owed by those still in the Police and Home Office.

Dawn was breaking by the time their tasks for the night were completed. John decided to let them rest until the evening. Dido and Trish would have to skip their two lectures that day. What they had done was more important.

After sending the girls to bed, John made a phone call.

“Charles… John Proudfoot.”

“Retirement is very stimulating.”

“Not quite a social call. Is your lord and master playing Golf as usual on Saturday morning?”

“He is? Is it by any chance in my neck of the woods?”

“Walton Heath? I know where it is.”
John mentally groaned. Another trip to the other side of London on the M-25. He hated that road.

“I need to have half an hour with him after his round.”

“No, Charles. This is very, very top secret. At the moment, it is for his eyes only.”

“All I will say is that I have definitive proof that there is a major leak inside Operation Chesil”

“Thanks, Charles. I don‘t have to say it, but this is very sensitive in both time and content.”

John hung up the phone and stared out the window. In the gloom, he could see the eyes of a fox hunting in the undergrowth. This was one fox that he didn’t mind having on his property.

John travelled to Walton Heath Golf Club on Saturday morning with a troubled mind. The photographs in his bag could cause a lot of people to get very nervous. While that was right ethically, there was a nagging thought that it might come back to haunt him.

He found his target in the club bar, drinking an orange juice.

“Terry, nice to see you again,” said John.

“And you. I got your message and the need for this to be on the QT. Why don’t we go for a little walk around the practice range?”

John waited for Terry March, the current head of the Met Police Internal Affairs department, AC-12, to finish his juice.

Once they were outside, Terry said,
“I won’t belittle you by asking if what you are going to tell me is important. You were never a person who grandstanded anything. You were all about facts, and I have to assume that this… whatever it is, is no different. Am I correct?”

“Yes, Terry, you are correct.”

“The message I received said something about Operation Chesil. Firstly, how do you know about it? As far as I know, we have not released the name to the media.”

“I know about it because I know one of the victims. Is that good enough?”

Terry smiled.
“That is good enough. The message said something about leaks in the team?”

“I did. Take a look at these photos here. For the moment, this is just a heads up.”

“What do you mean ‘heads up’?”

“If everything goes well with something else, there will be an arrest that will blow the media up into a frenzy within a week or so. I can’t say what this is all related to, but when the balloon goes up, it will make sense. What I’m asking is for you to have a team ready to hit the ground running, so that those involved won’t have much time to cover their tracks.”

“Ok, I think I understand. What have you got to show me?”

Terry went through the photos slowly. With each one, the shake of his head got more noticeable.

“Where did you get these? I’m assuming that whoever took them was not a Police Officer?’’

“Correct,” said John, hoping that this lie did not come back to haunt him.

“These are all Crime Scene photos from Operation Chesil or Police copies. The stamps on the rear of them lead me to believe that they are original prints produced by the Forensics people. The photos of the evidence were taken at a private house well outside the Met Police area. I can’t say where, but I can say that those who occupy the house where these were taken are not Met Police or CPS. These documents should not be there, as I’m sure that you would agree. I said that I knew a victim of this gang. Well, some of those photos are of her crime scene.”

Terry looked at the photos again.

“I want to emphasise the fact that what my people found were not just haphazard photographic copies of case evidence but proper evidential copies. The sheer number of documents means that this has been going on for some time. There is evidence from the case that involved the victim that I know. The head of Operation Chesil knows that I am helping that person with their rehab after the attack. As far as I know, they do not know about this leak.”

“And you want me to investigate the leaks once this mysterious arrest has happened?”

“I do. I know that it is not the best situation, but the people involved with the crimes that Chesil are investigating are not only sexually defiling women but going even further and destroying their lives, erasing their very existence. Talk about a double whammy… These people have taken sexual deprivation to a whole new level.”

“I wasn’t up to speed on the operation until I got your message. I tend to agree with you about their level of depravity, and to see that someone on the team is leaking this sort of information sickens me to the core. What we don’t know is if the person with all this data is part of the gang defiling these women.”

“I tend to think that they aren’t, but… we don’t know at this stage.”

Terry handed the photos back to John.
“Keep these. I have enough information to start to think about a team to investigate, but I am worried about this mysterious arrest. Are you sure about having the evidence to make an arrest?”

“I am, but as I said, the person involved is a VIP and has a lot of connections, which is why I won’t say anything else. When the arrest happens, I’ll give you a heads-up, and then you will understand why I don’t want to say more at the moment. My next task is to make sure that the arrest is watertight from a legal point of view, given their VIP status.”

“I understand.”

Terry stopped and looked at his watch.
“I need to be back in Westminster in an hour. Thanks for bringing all this to my attention.”

John knew that he was running out of time.

“Terry, there is a former home secretary who now sits in the Lords who owes me a big favour. If you do nothing, then I’ll call in that favour. I don’t want to have to do this, but at the moment, I don’t know who to trust.”

Terry smiled at John.
“I would not expect anything else from you, John. You never put a foot forward unless you have a plan B and C in reserve. I won’t do anything formally until I get your heads up, but I will brief a couple of my senior team members about the operation just so that they can clear their workload in a couple of weeks. We do that sort of thing all the time, so no one will raise an eyebrow.”

“If all this pans out, Terry, I’ll let you thrash me at golf.”

Terry laughed.
“That would be like taking sweets from a child, but I look forward to it.”

John drove home feeling apprehensive about what he’d done. While he was clear in his mind that it had to be done, he wasn’t 100% sure that he could trust Terry, even though his job was to put crooked cops behind bars. There was a risk with everything.

Every time he felt that they were making progress, new obstacles appeared out of nowhere to thwart them. The presence of that evidence in a property occupied by a prominent barrister who was known for his robust defence of the worst criminals in the land sickened him. That evidence, even if not used at trial, could be tainted.

As his journey around the M25 ground to a halt just after Junction 15, the words that crossed his mind were ‘life sucks’.

John was still waiting for the call, which, with every passing minute, looked like it would never happen, when Dido appeared late on Saturday morning. She and Trish had both decided to skip classes on Thursday, but had gone to the university on Friday as one of their lectures was given by Fox himself.

They wanted to see his behaviour to check to see if he would give anything away about a possible incursion at his home. The lecture went off as expected. Fox gave away no visible signs of anything out of the ordinary happening at his country home.

Fox was his normal obnoxious self, and his open dislike of Criminologists was there front and centre for all to see. He considered them to be failed lawyers. While many taking the course had failed their law exams, others were serious about being Criminologists. Trish and Dido were in that category. Otherwise, all was normal. Dido and Trish worked late into the evening on Friday, getting all their outstanding assignments done and dusted before travelling to John’s place for a wrap-up of their operation on Wednesday.

“There is Coffee in the pot and bacon and bread on the counter,” said John as Trish appeared, yawning her head off. They’d arrived on the last Central Line train the previous evening.

Dido smiled. John knew the way to Dido’s heart. Bacon Butties after a late night was her preferred pick-me-up.

“Have you been to bed?” asked Dido after she’d poured herself a mug of coffee.

“Not yet. I’m waiting for the Home Office to call me back.”

“How long have you been waiting?”

“Since zero nine-thirty.”

“They won’t be calling then? It is Saturday, after all?”

“It looks that way.”

“Plan B?”

“I’m going to call the AC of the Met. She will have a direct line to the Home Secretary.”

“Why? I’m a bit confused?”

“I was going to take everything to the chief of the NCA even though there is a mega leak inside the unit, but once I saw the photos of the two girls, he has imprisoned now… Well, I don’t mind saying that they put the fear of God through me. One of them is … or was the son of an MP. You remember the case from last year?”

Dido nodded her head.
“Yeah. The MP’s son was taken from his school by two men with fake creds. Everyone thought that it was a simple ‘for ransom kidnapping’, but no demands were ever received or at least none that were made public.”

“You got it in one. The MP, Peter Banks, was tipped for the top. Six weeks after the boy went missing, the MP took the ‘Chiltern Hundreds’[1] and left parliament. He dropped right off the grid after that. He’d been on the fringes of a property deal that had gone wrong when one of the other players decided to exit with a few million quid some years earlier, and as soon as his son went missing, the conspiracy theorists went into overdrive and soon he was being blamed for the whole debacle even though a public enquiry had cleared him of any direct involvement. He was crucified in the gutter press all while searching for his son.”

Dido stood with the mug cupped in her hands
“I know that look,” said John.
“Are you reading between the lines?”

“Yeah, and the swamp just tripled in size,” said Dido.
“What the hell does Fox have to do with this, and why is he or now she being held?”

“To keep someone silent, perhaps?” said John.

“Remind me never to even think about becoming a politician… If I ever do, then please put me out of my misery,” remarked Trish.

John managed a small laugh.

“John, please tread very carefully. We know that Fox has friends in high places, but this could get nasty if you speak to the wrong person,” said Dido in a soft voice. That was her ‘level 1 pleading voice’.

“I know that. That’s why I haven’t made the call yet.”

John looked at Dido and said,
“Don’t tell the Chrissy yet. The fewer who know who they have in those cells, the better. She is still a little fragile after the other night.”

“Gotcha, John. I’ll follow your lead,” said Dido.
“Can I fix you a sarnie?”

John smiled.
“Not at the moment. I’m going to my study to make a few calls.”

It was more than an hour later before John emerged. Trish and Chrissie were in the middle of a late breakfast, come lunch, come early tea. Dido was doing the washing up.

After putting the kettle on for a brew, John turned to the three women.

“We have a date with some top brass this evening at a hotel near Heathrow. Just smart casual as we don’t want to draw attention to ourselves.”

“Just who?” asked Trish, who had a slightly worried look on her face.

“The PPS to the Home Secretary and AC Bartholomew from the Met.”

“Sir…” said Trish
“There has to be more to this than you are saying?”
The tone of her voice and the use of ‘Sir’ conveyed to John that she was deadly serious.

John sighed and sat down. Dido took the hint and went to make him his tea. John needed his afternoon cup of Darjeeling to function properly.

“Trish, you are right and… the problem lies with the two captives. I’m not saying that what you found in that room is not important; it is, but that is insignificant when compared to who one of the captives is.”

“You know who they are?” asked Chrissie.

“One of them,” replied John, looking very uncomfortable.
“Is the son or was the son of the MP that was kidnapped late last year. I told Dido just now.”

The room fell silent. No one needed to ask anything else. The ramifications were huge. John had very much changed his tune from earlier.

“Thanks, John. Then I’ll be happy to go with you even if it gets me into trouble with my bosses,” said Trish.

He shook his head.
“Sorry Trish, this is for Dido and Chrissy alone as they are Fox’s victims. All they need to do is not mention you at all. Chrissy can even talk about not wanting to go inside. We can’t risk your participation becoming known.”

“Why?”

“I have to assume that Fox and his friends know about Dido and Chrissy but won’t want to take action because if they do, their story will come out. I made sure of that. There are video recordings of them telling their stories in a safe place with a legal firm I can trust and one who has no love for Mr Fox. Being exposed, even if he and his son don’t get charged, would be the death knell of his career. He relies upon his reputation to get work as a Barrister, and the University would not want to be involved with a scandal involving paedophilia.”

John took a sip of tea.

“As for you, Trish, you are our reserve. I’m only going to show one set of photos, the ones that Dido took. That preserves the chain of custody. If needed, you can testify that the ones that you took are the real deal. Plus, at this juncture, we don’t know who else is involved with the kidnapping other than Fox and his son. From Dido’s story, we know that there is an organisation doing the kidnapping and even a third doing the mutilating. So far, those are a complete mystery to us.

“We also know that there are a lot of other players involved with the trafficking of children and the supply of them to Fox. We have to believe that Fox is not the only recipient of children. They may or may not be mutilated in the same way. These paedophiles have their own very individual set of perversions. The end game for all of us is not only Fox and Son being given whole life sentences but the apprehension of those supplying the children and doing the mutilation, but also the gang who sodomised Chrissy. We know that there is a link, and the link is probably Fox Junior, but beyond that, it is a mystery.”

Everyone was in deep thought. The news about the captives sent chills through the three women, but it was worse for Dido and Chrissy. They knew what could be happening to those two poor people right now.

Suddenly, Dido leapt up and left the other three alone. They could hear her rummaging for something in the front room. Then she returned with her laptop.

“What’s wrong?” asked Trish.

Dido just put up her hand. Trish took the hint and waited while Dido hit the keys.

After two minutes, a smile appeared on her face.

“There was something that you said earlier, John, that got me thinking. It triggered a little niggle, and I was right. Fox represented the families in a wrongful death suit against the developers who built the crap leisure centre that collapsed and killed their loved ones. They lost and had to pay the other side’s costs.”

She turned her laptop screen so that the others could see it.

“How did you… even think about this?” asked John.

“Once I’d been accepted onto the course, I went and looked up the biographies of all the lecturers. This must have been just after the case, and it was there on his LinkedIn page. He scrubbed the case from the site after the people he was representing lost, but the reports of the case are there in the media. I have no idea if the costs have been paid, but…”

“Why would ‘he’ take the MP’s son? If I remember the news at the time, the MP was only an advisor to the project before it got planning permission?” asked Chrissy.

“You got it wrong. From memory, 10% of the costs were to be paid by the MP, which, again from memory, he paid. As for the rest, it could be that they did hide all their assets before the disaster happened. Kidnapping the son and selling him could be one way that Fox gets paid. The man has a ruthless streak when he is in court, and this case was one of his few losses. If the families could not pay him, and he’d lose a lot of cred in the criminal world if he sued them, then… the proceeds from trafficking the son would compensate him. As he’s involved with the trafficking business, or that is what we assume, then why not, eh?”

“It all seems very messy,” said Trish.

“That, my dear Trish, is an understatement,” said John.
“But,” he added,
“This is just between us until we get evidence to prove it one way or another. Understand?”

His voice was, for once, rock solid. Both Trish and Dido knew that he was deadly serious.
“We understand,” said Trish.
Dido nodded.

[later that evening at a hotel near Heathrow Airport]

“Please come in,” said the woman who answered the door to room 203.
“This is Julian Patterson, the PPS to the Home Secretary.”

“Hello. Please take a seat.”

Just then, there was another knock at the door. The woman opened it.

“Fiona, please come in,” said the woman who left the room and closed the door behind her.

“John, nice to see you again,” said Fiona.

Fiona Morgan was the newly appointed Assistant Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police.

“Nice to meet you, Mr Peterson, and to see you again, Fiona,” said John.
“These are the two erstwhile detectives who discovered what I’m about to show you. Dido is on the left, and Chrissy is on the right. I say detectives, but they are, as you will soon see, both victims of the perpetrator that we are about to expose to you both.”

“Thank you for coming here. From what John said on the phone, what you have is dynamite, and it would not be prudent for you to be seen meeting with me in Westminster,” said Julian.

“That is correct,” said John.

“Then please start your story. Neither of us has anywhere else to be tonight, so take your time,” said Julian.

“Dido? Why don’t you start the tale,” suggested John.

“Thanks, John.”
She looked at Chrissy and smiled.

“A couple of nights ago, Chrissy and I broke into a house not far from Royston in Hertfordshire.”

“Hold on there,” said Fiona.
“Are you admitting to a crime? John, I’m surprised at you?”

“Fiona…” said John.
“Please let them tell their story, then and only then react to what you hear.”

“I agree. Fiona, John would not have made such a song and dance if what we are about to hear wasn’t significant,” said Julian.

Fiona looked at John and Julian before nodding her head. Her body language was shouting… ‘This had better be good or else!’.

“Crissy and I have a history at this house. We were both held there for several years against our will after being trafficked as young children and given huge amounts of female hormones after having our male parts surgically removed.”
She paused for thought.
“Yes, we were both born male.”

The colour drained from the PPS’s face.

“As I said, we broke in because we wanted to get photographic evidence of where we were held to be used as a catalyst in an action against the man who is a public figure. Don’t ask who he is until the end.”

Dido looked at Chrissy.
“Dido opened the front door, but I could not go inside. The abuse I suffered inside that house was just too recent for me, so I stayed on watch while she went inside.”

“I went down to the cellar where I was held for nearly five years and made to perform many sex acts on the resident of the house and his friends. I found the cell where I lived for years. There are now three cells. When I was held, it was just the one. To my surprise, two of them were occupied by what appeared to be two young women. They seemed to have been drugged. That happened to me when the son of the resident wanted to go out for the night. I took copious photos of them, and you can see them soon.”

She looked at the two officials. The PPS was shaking his head.

“Believe me, sir, this is not some sort of trick. As I said, those bastards cut off my penis and testicles and left me with nothing but plain skin. Chrissy had the same work done to her, and I assume that the two girls in the cells have had it done as well.”

Dido took a deep breath and continued.

“Next to the cells where the girls were confined was a new structure. I went inside and found a treasure trove of crime scene photos and files.”

She turned to the AC.
“There is an operation being run by the NCA to investigate cases of gang rape where the victim’s life is also taken apart and ruined. I believe it is called Operation Chesil. These case files were all related to the cases being investigated as part of that project. Someone inside the NCA is corrupt.”

“How do you know about the NCA operation?” asked the AC.

“That’s because I’m also one of the victims that Operation Chesil is dealing with,” said Chrissy.
“There were photos of me with a beer bottle up my rectum on the wall. It turned my stomach when John showed them to me.”

“To sum up,” said John.
“We have a property where two young women or possibly former males are being held against their will and made to perform various sex acts also against their will. Then, there is all the crime scene data. What the hell is all that doing there?”

“Who owns the property?” asked the AC.

“We traced the ownership via three offshore shell companies to Professor Jonathan Fox QC.”

The room went silent.

“Shit,” muttered Julian.
The AC remained impassive apart from a tug to one sleeve of her jacket.

“Then we come to the identity of the two captives,” said John.
“I have good reason to believe that one of them is the son of Tony Banks, the former MP who had his son kidnapped at the back end of last year.”

“Here are some copies of the photos that Dido took. They are all on these USB drives.”

John gave Fiona and Julian each a package of twenty photos that would back up the story that they’d just been told.

They studied them for almost ten minutes in silence.

Eventually, Julian broke the silence.
“What do you want me to do?”

“We’d like you to work with Fiona to get a search warrant on the QT and organise a raid, run by the Hertfordshire Police on the place before they can hear about it and destroy all the evidence. Naturally, the NCA must not be involved given the obvious leak or outright corruption in the NCA,” said John.

“John, how do you know Dido and Chrissy, if you don’t mind me asking?” asked the AC.

“Dido escaped from the house and was on the streets for a while. One day, she tried to steal my car, and I caught her in the act. I didn’t call the locals but gave her a good feed and the chance to get clean. Slowly, she revealed what she’d been through. I paid for her to have counselling and rehab. Now, she’s a fully paid-up member of society. As for Chrissy, she was attacked at a club that, by a huge streak of luck, was managed by a friend of Dido’s … from before she was trafficked. He saw that Chrissy had been mutilated just like Dido and called her. She’s been going through the same sort of rehab as Dido has since last March.”

John took the opportunity to ask,
“Are you going to arrest Dido for B&E?”

Fiona smiled.
“Given what she discovered, I don’t think so. She took a huge risk in doing that on her own.”

“Thank you, Ma’am.”

“Fiona, please… when we are not on Police premises.”

“Julian? You have been very quiet?”

“Sorry. I’m still trying to get my mind around what we’ve just seen. It is awful, and all those involved need to be put in prison for a long, long time, but I’m not sure how I can help here?”

“The Home Office is in charge of policing, is it not?”

“Yes, why?”

“Then a word with the relevant Chief Constables along with Fiona when you come to plan the raid on the house just to keep it, need to know would help. Then, making doubly sure that the crooked cops in the NCA get thrown out on their backsides in a very public manner. There are enough Chief Constables out there who want the NCA to fail miserably, would it not be in your best interest to stamp out the few bad eggs ASAP and help quash those nay-sayers.”

Then John added,
“AC-12 know about the leak. I had an off-the-record meeting with Terry March. He does not know that it is Fox who is the target. All he knows is that when news of a big arrest hits the media, he can get his team into the mix. It is clear from the photos that there is a lot of Operation Chesil evidence at Fox’s home. All we can hope for is that there are some fingerprints of serving officers on them. While that is bad for the force, any collusion between the Operation Chesil team and the gang of sadists committing the crimes is even worse.”

Julian smiled.
“I can see why you were tipped for the top job in the Met. You cover all the bases.”

John shook his head.
“I never wanted it. Far too political for me. Far too many fools and idiots get into politics for the national good.”

“I think we are done here,” said Fiona.
“Julian and I will sleep on what we have seen and heard tonight. I have a regular meeting at the Home Office on Monday afternoon. I’ll meet with you after that, Julian.”

Jon nodded his head.
“Thank you both, but please remember these two things. Firstly, time is of the essence. There are two young people locked in cells and being made to do who knows what possibly as we sit here talking, and they need rescuing. The second is that the fewer people who know about this, the better. There is no telling what Fox will do if he gets wind of an impending Police raid. Those young lives could be in danger.”

“Thank you, John,” said Julian.
“That is a very persuasive argument, and I am sure that we will take action very soon.”

Dido and John left the others to talk but John could tell that Dido was not happy. She had done her best to hide it but he knew her body language very well.

Dido could hardly contain her anger but somehow managed to get to John’s car before letting out a piercing scream.

“They didn’t believe a fucking word we just said.”
“I could go back in there and kill both of them right now.”
[to be continued]

[1] Chiltern Hundreds – A mechanism whereby a sitting MP can resign their seat.
https://www.parliament.uk/globalassets/documents/commons-inf...

“Calm down, Dido,” said John, who was surprised at her outburst.

Dido showed no signs of doing as he wanted.
“Calm down and tell me why you think that they didn’t believe a word?”

Dido was looking for something to hit. He’d never seen her as angry as this, even when she’d identified Professor Fox as the man who had held her captive and made her perform all sorts of unthinkable sex acts for years.

Chrissy stood well back. She’d seen angry people during her time in the same captivity as Dido. Those men who could not get it up, even with their dick shoved down her throat, got angry with her and had then taken it out on her with their fists and feet. Broken ribs and a dislocated shoulder were payment for apparently being unable to excite a man who had paid handsomely for the opportunity to abuse a child.

She had never seen a woman as angry as Dido was now. She knew that Dido’s anger was from the heart.

The three of them sat in the car while Dido calmed down. After nearly ten minutes, she said nothing but got out of John’s car and kicked the tyres. John knew that was her blowing off some steam. After a few minutes, she got back in the car and put on her seatbelt. Her eyes were tightly closed, and her teeth clenched. He’d never seen Dido or almost anyone as angry as this and not let out a stream of expletives in his long career in the Police. John started the car and drove out of the car park. Not a word was said during the journey, but John could sense Dido’s anger at the whole thing. He wondered if it was a farce, as Dido had suggested.

Back at John’s home, there was still tension in the air, but Dido seemed to be a lot calmer than before.

“Ok, Dido, you have done enough chewing the cud, so why don’t you tell us why you think that the Assistant Commissioner and a senior official from the Home Office did not believe a word that we said tonight?”

“Do you remember telling me to watch a few trials before starting my degree?”

“Yes. I know that you went to the Old Bailey to watch Fox in action.”

“That is very true, but I also went to a couple of magistrates’ courts and a few crown courts. I saw her testify at Southwark Crown Court. This was just after she’d been promoted to commander and was related to a case when she was a SIO to a big drugs bust. She was a chief super at the time, which, if you remember, I commented on as being unusual.”

“Yes, I remember. The case fell apart when some crucial evidence went missing.”
“That’s the one,” said Dido defiantly.

“So?” asked John.

“She has a tell. She fiddles with the cuff of her jacket with her left hand when she is lying. She did it under oath in part of that case where she was a witness to an assault by one of the drug kingpins two days before the bust. She testified that she could not recognise the assailants, yet three days previously, I’d seen her deep in conversation with one of them in Spitalfields Market. It turned out that he was a CI of hers, and she was determined to keep him out of jail. Then tonight, she said all that crap about reviewing the situation while she fiddled with the cuff of that two-and-a-half thousand-pound Givenchy Jacket.”

“I’m not sure,” said John.

“John, do you trust me and my word?” said Dido.

“I have never questioned it before, but now? I don’t know.”

“So, why don’t you go to the Home Office on Monday and see if there is a meeting? If there isn’t, then you have your answer. If they do meet, then get their decision right there and then?”

“You are right. I will do that. Your beef is with the AC and not Julian?”

“Yes, unless he is in bed and I mean that literally with her. They had furtive glances at each other from the moment she arrived.”

“I didn’t see that, but I’m willing to go along with your claim that she is bent. I never really trusted her when I was on the job. She rose through the ranks far too quickly for my liking. Julian is openly bisexual for what it matters.”

“Good. Now I’m going to bed.

Dido walked out of the kitchen, leaving Chrissy and John behind. Neither of them had seen her as angry as this ever before. The normally mild-mannered woman had changed into a fire-breathing dragon in a flash. John was now unsure as to what sort of game the AC was playing, but it was up to him to find out. He owed Dido and Chrissy that much, at least.

Later that evening, John reviewed what Dido had said. For her to explain the tell of the AC so accurately was unnerving for him. He knew that her powers of observation were second to none. He thought back to the meeting, and it didn’t take him long to understand that Dido was right about the AC. She either didn’t believe a word that had been said to her despite the evidence, or, even worse, she was as corrupt as Fox. He didn’t want to think about the second option. For an Assistant Commissioner of the MET Police to be corrupt would be a national scandal in its own right.

John got up early the following morning, fully intending to talk to Dido about his plans for the day. His good intentions went up in smoke when he saw the door to Dido’s bedroom wide open and her bed made up. She’d either not gone to bed or had left very early for God knows where. Then, a thought occurred to him, and he dashed to the window. His BMW was parked where he’d left it the previous night. Dido had left on foot. For a moment, he had visions of Dido wrapping the powerful car around a lamppost in her anger at the world.

He looked at his watch and did a mental calculation. It would take her almost an hour to walk to the nearest railway station, and the first train into London was due in a little under five minutes. He didn’t have enough time to get there to stop her. His shoulders sagged. The last thing he wanted was Dido in a ‘get even’ mood on the rampage in Central London. Her excellent skills in many of the criminal arts could present a threat to any business she set her mind on robbing or something.

There was nothing he could do from where he was right now, but he had Chrissy to think about. When it was just Dido and him, things were so much easier.

Chrissy hadn’t said much the previous evening after their return from the meeting at the hotel. She’d deflected all his attempts at getting her to open up before going to bed. He had to try again with Chrissy before heading into central London and searching for Dido.

Chrissy came into the kitchen well over an hour later. Her arrival made John stop thinking about Dido and focus more on getting breakfast for them both.

Chrissy’s first words were,
“I know that Dido has gone off. She came into my room just before four this morning and told me. She said to tell you that she will be back and not to worry about her. She also said that she wasn’t going to do anything stupid.”

John managed a small smile.
“That’s me put in my place then?”

Chrissy reached over and took John’s hand. She’d shied away from almost all physical contact with males ever since her attack.
“John, you are a good man, and you are like a father to both Dido and me, but acting like a broody hen is not going to get you anywhere.”

John laughed.
“What did I just say about being put in my place?”

“It is true, isn’t it?” asked Chrissy.

“Ok, ok. Yes, I am like a broody hen at times, but you two are my family. We… my late wife and I couldn’t have children, and now… and twenty years too late, I have two wonderful daughters to care for.”

He smiled at Chrissy, but his mind was really on the whereabouts of Dido.
Just then, Trish wandered in with a big yawn.
“Did I miss anything last night?”

Her words diffused the anger of the moment.

On Monday morning, Dido was loitering without intent on Victoria Street about halfway between Victoria Station and Westminster. She had a hunch that one of the two people whom they’d presented to the previous Saturday evening was going to be in the area before mid-morning.

Her reasoning was that was where she’d witnessed the same assault as Assistant Commissioner Fiona Morgan. Her evidence at the trial of that very assailant had indicated that she walked from Victoria Station, along Victoria Street and past the ‘New Horticultural Hall’ on her way to her office inside New Scotland Yard every morning.

Dido walked up and down the street for well over an hour before conceding that the AC was not going to appear. She headed for St James’s Park Tube Station and disappeared into the underground network. A simple search told her that she’d been silly to think that an AC of the MET Police would walk to work. The assault that she’d witnessed had taken place before her latest promotion. Now, she would have a car and driver for official business.

Now that ‘Plan A’ had fallen through, Dido headed for Brick Lane. This once den of iniquity was now a gentrified tourist hot spot, but it still had many links to the criminal world once you got off the main tourist route from Bethnal Green Tube to Spitalfields and then to Liverpool St Station. Her destination was closer to Hoxton than Brick Lane, but Dido was in no hurry. The person she was looking for was never an early riser unless the police came knocking on his door at zero-dark-something ungodly.

It was almost midday when Dido rang the bell to the penthouse flat where her long-time friend lived.

“Hello?” came a distinctly sleepy voice over the intercom.

“Ricky, it’s Blondie,” she said, using her old ‘street’ name.

The door clicked open without even a second of hesitation. Dido went inside and made sure that the door was closed and locked behind her.

Ricky Marlow and Dido had crossed paths when she was living on the street. She had been begging on Brick Lane for over a week and had noticed that someone was following him whenever he ventured out. It was very subtle, but there was a tail. Brick Lane had been a bit of a lost cause for a few days… well, it was early November, which is mostly a dead month in the tourist calendar. The Lord Mayor’s show at the start of the month had proved very profitable for Dido, so she decided to follow the followers.

After three days, she had a good idea of who was tailing Ricky. While it was never the same person all day, they all belonged to a South London Crime gang. Ricky was only slightly ‘bent’, but his main source of income was trading information. Dido guessed that the mob from south of the river wanted in on his information brokerage.

Blondie, as she was then known on the street, had introduced herself to him at a Café in Hoxton one Sunday morning. At first, Ricky had been suspicious of her, but a few photos of him with an obvious tail soon persuaded him to give her the time of day.

She wanted information that was not generally available to the public, and Ricky was the ‘go to’ guy for it, but he would not deal with any ‘Tom, Dick or Harriet’. You had to win his trust first. Over the next two months, she did just that, and eventually, Ricky gave her the information she wanted.

“I heard you were going straight. If so, why are you risking being seen coming here?”

“Nice to see you too, Ricky…” remarked Dido.

Ricky smiled.
“Sorry, Blondie, it is still a bit early for me.”
He looked at the clock.
“And I’m due at Murray’s Pie and Mash shop in half an hour.”

Dido wasn’t sure if he was trying to pull a fast one, but she let it slide.

“I need some info on AC Fiona Morgan. The more dirt, the better.”

The smile that was on Ricky’s face disappeared in a flash when he heard the name.
“No way, Blondie. She is strictly a no-go area.”

“I wasn’t asking you to get it yourself. I would not be that silly. No, I was kinda hoping that one of your international associates would do it, and then you are out of the loop and squeaky clean, if you get my meaning.”

Ricky thought for a moment.
“Ok, I know someone who might do it for a decent wedge. He’s into Bitcoin.”

Dido smiled.
“Sounds like the person I want. Payment on results after a 10% retainer?”

“That would do it. 10% would show that you are serious.”

“Good. I’ll let you get ready for your pie and mash. You have my dark web contact details?”

“Yeah, I do.”

“Here is your finder’s fee,” said Dido.
She put down on the nearby table an envelope with more than 500 euros in it.
“Don’t let me down, or I’ll be back, ok?”

Ricky smiled.
“Have I ever let you down?”

“No, and if this person is as good as you say they are, then there will be another one of those at the end.”

Dido didn’t wait for Ricky to answer. Their business was done, and neither of them was into small talk.

While Dido was trying to find out why the AC had not done anything about their case, John Proudfoot had begun to call in a few more favours from people he had worked with while he was a serving Police Officer. None of them would speak openly, but he began to read between the lines, and it didn’t take long for him to discover that AC Fiona Morgan was not a person to be associated with. The image that formed in his mind was of someone who had changed once she’d reached Superintendent. After that, she was prepared to put a knife in the back of anyone who even threatened to get in her quest to become Commissioner.

The then Commissioner had put her in charge of rooting out corruption in the Metropolitan Police. She had become very vindictive and had developed a very forked tongue. Something had happened to her soon after that appointment. No one could put an exact reason as to why she’d changed as she had, but everyone was definite in the opinion that she was not to be trusted. It was reported that she and the head of AC-12, Terry March, were hardly speaking thanks to her demand that she be fully briefed on every case, no matter how trivial. To Terry and his team, that was a clear security risk. AC-12 relied upon their veil of secrecy to get a long way into their investigations before even those suspected of wrongdoing became aware of the interest in their affairs.

Anyone involved with Police Corruption immediately becomes a pariah with most of the rank-and-file cops, but she’d done something to alienate them. None of the people he contacted would say anything on the record that could come back to haunt them. That told him that there was something rotten going on in and around her office.

Dido hated working on the ‘Dark Web’, so she relied on people like Ricky to do it for her. That was how she found out the online identity of the person who had held her prisoner and made her perform all sorts of unmentionable sex acts. He, as in Professor Fox or his son Marcus, was active on the same ‘Dark Web’. He used the alias ‘BrerRabbit’. That bit of information came to her after less than a day into a search that she’d started via Ricky. It was hard for her to resist going online and searching for the alias, but she was paying good money for the services of a group of people who inhabited the ‘Dark Web’ daily. She had learned to trust them not to come up with fake information; even so, she would check every detail before sharing it with anyone.

After two days of dithering, Dido used an alias to create an account on the service used by Fox on the ‘Dark Web’. She was able to do it easily, thanks to her Bitcoin account. Once on the service, she paid for access to the ‘BrerRabbit’ photo library. Despite being prepared, Dido was shocked by the images she saw. For 0.02 of a Bitcoin, she was able to purchase access to a high-resolution picture of herself being bum fucked by a huge man. She remembered the man vividly, thanks to his terrible breath. She saved all the details in an encrypted file. There, it would stay unless it was needed at the time of Fox’s trial. At the time, she didn’t know who the man was, but she’d stumbled upon an article about him in the online edition of the Financial Times. The man with the bad breath had been tipped to be the next chairman of the IMF, the International Monetary Fund, about the time the picture was taken, but had not got the job. The power that someone like that could wield could make or break countries. He’d have to be taken down after Fox had been found guilty.

She found one more photo that hurt Dido just looking at it. Nevertheless, she bought it for 0.23 of a Bitcoin. It would be held back and only used if absolutely necessary to take Fox down; it was that incriminating.

Once that was done, she sat back and thought about what she was doing. It was probably illegal to possess pornographic images of a child, even if that child was her. At that moment, she almost quit the operation, but her curiosity got the better of her once again.

Some of the other pictures that ‘Brer Rabbit’ had available were of two as yet unknown captors. They looked a lot younger than even the image of a young Dido. She felt even angrier when she saw the cost of those images. The price went as high as 0.5 Bitcoin. For a moment, Dido considered asking around for someone to hack the Bitcoin account of ‘BrerRabbit’, but decided to leave well alone for the time being. She got the hell out of Fox’s sordid place, but even then, she felt rather unclean. Her nemesis, Fox, was getting to her once more. One or both of the Fox’s was making at least several hundred thousand pounds a year selling child abuse porn. It sickened her for a while. After thinking about it some more, she reasoned that it was just the sort of thing that Marcus would do.

She documented everything that she had done, including her justification for the exercise. Then she saved it all in her private cloud after encoding it three times with a 256-bit cypher only known to her. The keys to decoding the file were saved inside a high pixel-density image of Tower Bridge using a steganographic technique.

After a couple of hours of thinking, she concluded that she needed to have enough Bitcoin or whatever digital currency was needed to fund the search for Fox and the people who supplied children for him to sodomise at will. She had some Bitcoin, but for this sort of work, it had to be done using a different identity.

When Dido saw the exchange rate for Bitcoin, she smiled. A quick calculation on her phone showed that she’d made a cool two hundred and sixty thousand dollars in Bitcoin so far. She transferred some of her holdings to a trusted intermediary and cashed in most of the rest. She’d already survived one crash in the bitcoin/dollar currency rate, and now was as good a time as any to take her profits and run. The money appeared in her Puerto Rican Bank account before the close of their working day. That account was her retirement nest egg, should everything go belly up with her life, such as it was.

The intermediary would hold the money for a 2.5% consideration and send it anonymously to whoever Dido directed him to. The consideration guaranteed his discretion.

Dido went through the motions at university for the next few days. Trish tried and failed to get her to start thinking rationally again. Even going out for a run along the Thames path as far as Abbey Wood failed to quash that irritation. It was only the smell of the mega-sized sewage works that turned her around.

In desperate need of something else to do, Dido went to see John and Chrissy. Trish, having done all her washing, tagged along in the hope of a nice ‘John Proudfoot’ Sunday lunch’.

Right away, she saw that John was just as unhappy as she was. Chrissy was the only bright spark in the place. That was because she’d received her Passport and new National Insurance card. From now on, she could work legally and not just for cash in hand.

To celebrate Chrissy’s newfound status, Dido took her shopping in Milton Keynes. It helped Dido forget about the rotten week that she’d had for a few hours at least.

The day ended with an encrypted text arriving just as she went to bed. Once she’d decoded the message, she went to bed in a much happier frame of mind.

John’s depression was down to the failure of AC Morgan to act on the information given to her by John, Dido and Chrissy. She’d gone silent, and so far, she had not returned any calls from John. His contacts in the Met were also very quiet.

As an alternative, John was trying all sorts of avenues to get enough support for a search warrant, but every time, the path led towards the AC and a glass wall that no one wanted to break.

“She is on the take,” said Dido calmly the following weekend.
Dido and Trish were at John’s for a planning session. Chrissie was working in the kitchen at the pub three lunchtimes a week.

“I guessed that, but how and where?” remarked John as he put the last of the plates from lunch away.

“Do you want the dirt on the AC?” asked Dido.
“I mean, the type of dirt that will get her fired in a flash?”

John looked at Dido. He knew the look in her eyes.
“I can see that you have at least something on her, don’t you?”

Dido grinned.
“Lawyers’ questions,” she replied.

John shook his head.
“You do. How bad is it?”

“Ask yourself how she, as a lowly superintendent, not a chief super…, could afford to pay cash for her penthouse apartment on the river in ‘Chelsea Reach’? They go for upwards of one million, and there is no mortgage on the property. Ask yourself, did she have an inheritance or a rich husband who suddenly popped his clogs? If the answer is no, where the hell did she get the cash from? The cookie monster?”

John sat back and closed his eyes. Dido knew that was his thinking mode, so she carried on.

“According to my sources, she owns it outright without a mortgage. She still owns and pays the mortgage on her old place in Cheam, but her main place of residence is Chelsea. She claims the single-person discount for the Council Tax on that property, and the Cheam place is currently empty, so she pays the full amount on it. How can she do all that on a Super’s salary and currently drives a Porsche 911 GT-3 that she bought when she was promoted to Commander? Again, according to my sources, she paid cash for it, and I don’t mean a bank transfer. The sums simply don’t add up.”

“And you just happened to have all this information at your fingertips, didn’t you?” asked John slightly sarcastically.

“I did. I paid for someone to do some research. Don’t worry; it can’t be traced back to me. I paid for it in Bitcoin.”

John shook his head.

“I take it that there is more?”

“Lots and lots. There is even the hint of a link to Fox via a common third party.”

It was rare for John Proudfoot to swear, but this was one of those days.
“Fuck.”
“Will she tip him off?”

“I doubt it. At the moment, she and the PPS are the only people who know who the target is. For her to tip Fox off would be career-ending for her, and she has publicly stated that she wants to be the next Commissioner.”

“What do you propose?”

Dido grinned.
“I’m not going to do a thing. The people who dug up all this data do not like corrupt cops any more than the rest of us. I would guestimate that she has less than a week in the job left.”

“But… Dido, what did you do?”

“Moi?”

“Yes, you!” demanded John

“I dropped them some bitcoin and a name. They did the rest. The Dark Web is a dirty place, and I have only touched the surface and have kept well away from that swamp. What I did see scared me shitless.”

John looked at Dido. As usual, he knew when she was holding things back.

“And?” he asked.

“It is dirty, really dirty. Here.”

Dido showed John the picture of herself with a man doing his thing.

“How did you get this?”

“I paid a little bit of digital currency to ‘BrerRabbit’.”

“That’s Fox, isn’t it?” asked John.

“That’s him. The photo was taken by his son. The BrerRabbit site has images of me, Chrissy, the two that we saw in the cells and two other captives that we don’t know about for sale. It was horrific to see myself and Chrissy, then everyone else being abused. The newer ones are ten times more expensive than mine. I think that these more recent ones are of the two that are being held right now. They all cost over a hundred quid each at the current exchange rate of bitcoin to the pound.”

“Fuck. I didn’t think he’d go that far, but…?” remarked John.

“He is evil. We’ve known that for years, but this is a new low even for Fox.”

“This photo is between the three of us, ok?” asked Dido, who looked at Trish when she said it.
Trish nodded. She was just sitting back and watching Dido and John work as a team. They were able to connect in ways that made her envious.

John nodded, so she continued.
“If it comes down to it, I will get this entered as evidence. This will destroy his case, but that is for another day. AC Morgan is the immediate problem,” said Dido as she put the photo away.

John sat looking at Dido for several minutes before saying,
“Let them loose on her. We are done playing passive. Get her out of the loop ASAP.”

Dido grinned.
“Thanks, John.”

She fiddled with her phone for several minutes. The frown lines on her forehead deepened as every minute went by. Eventually, her phone pinged, she looked at the message and smiled.

“It is all done. If they are as good as they say they are, then she is toast. Information about her finances will be sent to all the major UK media outlets before 22:00 tonight. I hope the editors still know how to command, ‘hold the front page’.”

“I’m so glad that you are on our side,” said John.

After a brief smile, John asked,
“Out of interest, just how much did all this cost you? In real money, I mean?”

“Around ten grand, give or take a grand.”

Dido saw the consternation on John’s face.
“Don’t worry, I have done very well out of Bitcoin since I bought some with my dipping proceeds after you talked to me about diversification of funds. Like you taught me then and many times since, I make some gains on my investments, and I cash some of it out. I have built up a nice little nest egg over the years. Using a little of it to get at Fox and friends is a small price to pay.”

“What did I say before about you becoming a master crim?”

“Doing evil against the bad guys is very satisfying. It is hardly criminal to come out fighting them with their weapons, and it is enjoyable, and for that, I have you to thank.”

“Me?” exclaimed John.

“Yes, Dad. Your gentle persuasion has made me do things the right way, but this episode has taught me that sometimes, you have to stoop to their level to beat them into the dust.”
Dido smiled.
“Just like putting an undercover officer into a crime gang. They often have to prove themselves to gain credibility. That is stooping to their level in my book.”

John just shook his head… smiling.

Trish had sat silently while this exchange was going on. The data that Dido had gleaned via the Dark Web was astounding. She had been aware of its existence, but this was opening up a whole new can of worms for all of them.

“How can you prove the authenticity of those financial figures?” asked Trish more out of desperation than anything else.

Dido responded.
“The purchase price of her Chelsea Harbour home is public record via the Land Registry. A slightly bent lawyer knows how to check to see if there is a lien on the property. A lien can include a mortgage. There isn’t one. Then, the council has the electoral roll online. Unless you know how to, your details are there for all to see. I’m surprised that as an AC, she has not gotten her details removed, but they are still there in the public record,” explained Dido.

She added,
“Just Google her name, and you will see for yourself. Yes, some of the data is hidden, but the people I paid to do the work get results. They sent me a report with only the publicly available data, but with markers to tell me a lot more was available. For a little more money, I’d get the full thing, but once I saw the first report, I knew that I didn’t need to see any more. That said, what they send to the media is out of my control, and I don’t want to be involved in that. The Dark Web people do not give out their hidden sources unless you pay lots and lots for them. The normal deal is that they only pass on publicly verifiable information. That’s what I asked for, and that’s what I got.”

The media, just as Dido had hoped, went into overdrive when the full extent of AC Bartholomew’s wrongdoing was exposed. It did not matter that Christmas was just a few weeks away; there was an establishment target to be taken down, and they were like a pack of hungry wolves.

The people releasing the dirt spread it out over three days for maximum effect. On the 4th day, it was reported that AC Bartholomew tendered her resignation. She was nowhere to be seen at her apartment in Chelsea, nor her old home in Cheam. One report had her boarding a Eurostar service to Lille and Brussels early on the morning of the first day of exposure, but no one could confirm that.

The final exposé of data showed that she also owned a villa near Annecy in the French Alps. That property had been left to her by her father on his death. The Media raced to the location only to find that she’d left a few hours before their arrival. She was in the wind. It did not matter; her career was over.

Now that her ability to block or delay the application for a search warrant was gone, the CPS wasted no time and called John Proudfoot and Dido into a meeting at the CPS HQ.

After two hours of what can only be called an interrogation of Dido, where John sat back and watched his protégé repel all boarders or in this case, three very experienced barristers with ease, the CPS team were satisfied about the viability of Dido’s evidence. The head of the CPS, one of the other Assistant Commissioners, plus John and Dido and the newly arrived Chief Constable of Hertfordshire, headed for the High Court in ‘The Aldwych’ where representations were made before three distinguished Court of Appeal Judges for a search warrant of Fox’s home in Hertfordshire.

John and the Chief had known each other from before he retired. She sat at the back of the room and let the other players do their thing. At the end of the meeting, she smiled and nodded at John.

To the surprise of John and Dido, the three judges had already read the application. They spent almost an hour questioning the CPS and Dido. John was worried about this. This was now public and Dido’s first experience of being part of a court proceeding rather than an observer.

“Ms Pleasance, you are admitting that you broke into a private residence,” asked one of the judges.

“I am. As I have said, I was held captive in that house for several years. I consider that it is my civic duty to make every effort to ensure that no one else is taken. If I am arrested and charged, I do not think that a jury would convict me when they hear about my reasons for going inside.”

“What you say are allegations,” said a second member of the panel.

“Sir,” said Dido.
“They are most certainly not allegations. Here… look at this.”

To John’s silent annoyance, Dido produced the image of her being sodomised in a cell.
“This is a picture of me being abused. It clearly shows this scar on my arm.”

She pulled up the sleeve of her top to show the court.

“Where did you obtain this?” asked the third member of the panel.

“From the Dark Web. It and many more, just like it, of me and other captives, are for sale by ‘suspect 1’ under an alias, naturally. The cost of that one image was approximately £300 in Bitcoin. Newer ones of his current captives are considerably more expensive. I know it is probably illegal for me to have that image even though it is of me, but if you wanted evidence, then here it is. I can also show you what they did to me physically, should you want verification. The Tulip tattoo shown in the photo is still there today.”

The three judges looked at the image. There was a lot of head shaking. Then, they conferred with each other before the first and clear leader addressed the court.

“Given this piece of evidence, we are prepared to grant the application for a search warrant of the house and grounds where ‘suspect 1’ and ‘suspect 2’ are residents.”

That was it. The hearing was over, and a signed search warrant was issued. The lead judge made a point of returning the photo to Dido. From the look on their faces, they didn’t want to be tainted by this sort of damming evidence…

When the warrant had been issued, Dido thought that her involvement may have been over, but that was 100% wrong.

As they walked out of the court, Trish arrived looking worried.
“You were missed at Fox’s tutorial this afternoon. He gave you a ‘D’ for your last assignment.”

Dido took a deep breath.
“Trish, calm down. Things are moving. This is the Chief Constable of Hertfordshire.”

Trish stepped back.
“Sorry, Ma’am. DC Trish Long, Durham Constabulary.”

The Chief smiled.
“Glad to have you on board. I have heard a lot about you from John Proudfoot. All good I might add.”

Trish let out the breath that she had been holding. That was the sign for the A/C Chapple to talk to Dido.

“Ms Pleasance, we need you to help out on the raid itself.”

“Me? How?”

The Chief Constable answered.

“Since I was alerted by the CPS about the case and the location, I have had a small team planning the arrest of the prime suspect and the subsequent crime scene investigation at the site. The planning team have made it clear to me that the element of surprise is key to the successful arrest and the safety of the two captives. I concur with that point of view.”

She directly addressed Dido before continuing.
“Ms Pleasance, from your statements to the court and the CPS, it is clear to all of us that you know how to enter the property quickly and silently. I know that this is slightly irregular, but we’d like you to lead the team to breach the property. Then I get the feeling that someone like you could play an important part in calming the two girls because of who you are and what you have been through. Then there is the distinct probability that the sight of burly men in black could set them screaming, and we could lose the element of surprise. You can directly relate to their plight, can you not?”

“I can, but won’t the Met team, who are going to take part in the raid, feel that I’m an unwelcome interloper?”

AC Chapple smiled.

“Given the information we have about the house, we think that it is prudent that neither the MET nor the NCA will be involved at the crime scene until it has been fully processed. The Commissioner and the Home Secretary agree, given the recent revelations about a former colleague of ours, that this is a good move.”

No one said a word, so he continued.
“Thanks to a suggestion from John here, I did some arm-twisting earlier in the day, and the Chief Constable of Hertfordshire Constabulary herself will be leading the operation, which is why she is here now. It is her patch after all…”

He swallowed hard before carrying on.
”We think that this raid is so important that the mere presence of the local Chief Constable at the crime scene will keep everyone on top of their game. It also means that fewer people in the Met and NCA can spill the beans to Fox before the raid, given your testimony that you suspect that some of the visitors are serving Police Officers. While that testimony is at the moment unproven, we are not going to take any chances.”

Then he added,
“The Chief Constable can also approve the use of firearms should the need arise. We hope that it does not, but we need to cover all possibilities. This raid has to be done by the book. We all know Suspect 1’s ability to get accused people off on technicalities. He will go into overdrive when he is the accused and facing life in jail for his crimes.”

Dido was, for one, lost for words. She’d never imagined that she would see this sort of operation come together with little old her playing a key role in the arrest of him.

The Chief Constable added,
“We also think that your friends, Trish and Chrissy, will have a role as well, dealing with the victims once they have been extracted to a place of safety. Having people who can understand the plight of those poor girls with them for at least a few hours will be key to their long-term prognosis.”

Dido wasn’t sure. Her body language reeked of doubt.

“It won’t be for long. Just two friendly faces who have been through the same or know all about it are in our minds essential in reassuring the victims that their ordeal by Fox is over. Once they have calmed down and had a full medical so that the docs can see what cocktail of drugs they have been fed, they will be taken to a place of safety where specialist treatment can begin, but we know from past cases the initial contact and reassurance to the victims can reap huge dividends down the line.”

Dido knew how much both she and Chrissy had come to depend on John for support, but these victims were a lot younger and, therefore, far more volatile emotionally. It was going to be a tall order, but she knew that the softly, softly approach right from the start would help start their long and difficult healing process.

“Ok… but Trish and I have classes to attend. The university will be in chaos once news of Fox’s arrest gets out. We have to be seen to be there. Neither of us wants the fingers pointed at us until the trial, if we can help it. I’m sure that you can understand that point of view. We have to be there for the first lecture on Wednesday. It is normally given by Fox himself.”

She let the implications of that sink in.

There was no disagreement with her proposal. The current plan was for the raid to take place on the following Sunday night. Fox would probably not be missed until Wednesday, when Trish and Dido were due to attend a lecture given by Fox himself.

If they were asked, Dido and Trish would have to lie through their back teeth about the reasons why Professor Fox failed to appear for his lecture. It was just as well that he wasn’t coming, as neither of them had done any of the preparatory work they’d normally do for his lectures. Fox was always springing questions on the class about things that he hadn’t yet covered in his talk just to see who and, more importantly, who had not prepared for his class.

Dido sat down and closed her eyes. Redress was oh so close but still so far.

[Sunday Evening]
The Chief Constable was looking very awkward and uneasy. Assembled in front of her were eight officers, all clad in black and looking eager to get the job done.

Dido had just finished briefing the team about the property and, in particular, the cellar. That in itself was unusual. To have a ‘civilian’ basically running the operation was the main cause of that unease, but even she had to agree that, because Dido knew the lay of the land both inside and outside the house, she should be the best person to brief the team. So far, Dido had handled the briefing as if it were something that she did every day of the week. That impressed her. She didn’t know that she’d been coached by John on how to do a raid briefing before she became a student. It was part of getting her to understand how a raid was organised. That training came back to her when it was decided that she should be the one to brief the team on the raid. Her firsthand knowledge of the important parts of the house was the key to the success of this operation.

Dido’s level of confidence in the success of the operation had gone down well with the team despite her being a civilian. That was mostly down to her detailed description of the area around the house and where the stairs and cellar were located in relation to the front door.

There were just two items left on the briefing list to complete. These were down to the Chief Constable.

“Thank you, Ms Pleasance. Are there any further questions?”

One of the officers, who was wearing Sergeant’s stripes, put his hand up.

“Yes, Sergeant Mitchell?” said the Chief.

“Where are we going… You know, to serve this warrant?”

“I will reveal that in a minute. I hope that the information you have just received makes the need for this level of secrecy. Any leak could mean… well, if we want to maximise our chances of rescuing the prisoners alive, then we have to keep this operation secret. That’s why we have met here rather than at Police HQ.”

They were in a conference room of a motel at a service area on the A1 north of Stevenage. This was some fifteen miles from the target location and well away from Police HQ. None of those present had travelled in marked police cars. The orders of the Chief Constable had been very clear: keep it all low-key and quiet. Two of those present were firearms officers. If there was a need to deploy weapons, then the chief constable would be on hand to issue the order. Otherwise, they would be held in reserve.

Many eyes had been raised when they found out that it was the Chief herself who was acting as SIO for this operation. That alone told everyone that screwups would mean the end of their career prospects in the force. Plus, it told them that the target was also a person of influence.

“As there are no more questions, I need to collect your phones.”

There were some strange looks among the officers.

“As I indicated, secrecy and surprise are paramount to the success of the operation. You all know how much data modern phones send out about your location. All it needs is one of our phones to be tracked, and we could have a TV crew parked outside before we know it or worse, the whole thing is being live-streamed on multiple social media platforms.”

To demonstrate just how serious it was, the chief herself was first to turn off the phone and put it into an evidence bag with her name on the outside. That was then placed into a steel lockbox similar to the ones used to transport firearms in Police Cars.

There was no more dissent amongst the team. They understood the need to remain anonymous to anyone outside those involved in the raid.

“Please switch off your phones and place them and any smartwatches in this box. I will seal it and carry it in my vehicle. The metal container will act as a signal blocker. Once we have served the warrant and had the occupants of the house safely removed to another location, I will return them. Understood?”

None of those present raised any questions, so she continued.

“Good. The last item before we leave is for me to give you the location of the target house. As I said earlier, we will travel in pairs of vehicles, leaving here at five-minute intervals and rendezvous half a mile from the target location. We will be met there by an associate of Ms Pleasance. Together, they will lead us to the house on foot and up to the front door of the property as outlined by Ms Pleasance.”

Then she opened a folder that was on the desk in front of her and took out several sheets of paper.

“Here is the rendezvous location and where we can park up. Sergeant Foster, you are to take your car with the firearms to the marked location and wait until we join you. As the briefing notes say, we don’t anticipate the need for firearms, but you are to remain at the rendezvous point unless called for. Once we make the arrests and have them on their way to HQ, I will issue a stand-down order.”

She handed out the sheets to the team and gave them a couple of minutes to memorise the map.

“Right, gentlemen, it is six minutes past midnight. Let’s get going. I want to be serving the warrant before 02:00. The first team should leave now.”

[01:40 at the edge of the property to be raided]

“All is quiet,” said a voice from the darkness.

A figure dressed all in black appeared, holding a heavily shaded torch. It was the Chief Constable herself. Dido, also wearing black, joined her a few seconds later. A third person who was not introduced also appeared out of the darkness.

“Is everyone here?” asked the Chief.

Sgt Samuels said,
“Ma’am, we are all present. What next?”

“Ms Pleasance, this is your bit of the show. Please go ahead.”

“Those on the team for entering the property will follow my friend here. No cutting of corners. Keep a two-metre gap between the person ahead of you. Silence is golden,” said Dido.

The mysterious third man disappeared into the shadows, and the team followed him as instructed. Bringing up the rear was Dido and a distinctly uncomfortable Chief Constable. No one said a word. For that, the Chief was thankful. She was already mentally preparing her press release explaining why it was deemed necessary that a Chief Constable lead a raid on a house and the execution of a search warrant.

John had explained to Dido that a search warrant was not strictly needed as there was more than enough evidence to at least arrest Fox and his son, but… Fox’s reputation for getting evidence thrown out on technicalities was well-known to Police Officers across the country. A search warrant would give them the legal right to make a silent entry to the property. Dido was ok with the element of surprise. Dido would have liked to have been in his bedroom and given him a kick in his sensitive parts, but she would just have to wait for her time in court to nail him. Tonight was all about arrest and rescue.

Nine minutes later, the team assembled in front of the heavy oak door. So far, the move had been made in silence, with only the faint noise of the traffic on the A505 that was over a mile away as a sign that the team was not in the middle of nowhere.

Dido stepped forward, and just as she had done before, she quickly picked the lock. This time, it took her only thirty seconds. She eased the door open and walked inside. None of the officers followed her at that point. Their orders were to wait until the door to the cellar was opened.

Their mysterious guide retreated to where he and his friends had been observing the property for the previous four and a half weeks. As he did so, he allowed himself to have a small smile. With any luck, this would be the last night of their operation. When he reached the safety of his bivouac, he switched on a phone jammer. His orders were to do everything possible to make the police operation a success and then melt into the darkness. Jamming all mobile phones within half a mile was, while very illegal, just part of the work that his team had done to make the official operation a success. None of the Police Team knew about the jammer. This was, as his employer for the operation had said, ‘just to be sure that the suspect can’t tip anyone else off during the arrest’.

He and his colleagues had been very frustrated at not being authorised to storm the house and rescue the ‘two damsels in distress’. When their employer had explained that they should move only if there were signs that the girls were being moved, they redoubled their efforts to keep a vigilant watch on the property 24/7.

During a break at their safe house, one of the team members had come up with the idea of jamming phones. It took only a few days, and they had the jammer. There had been no time to test it, but… now was as good a time as any.

Inside the house, Dido crouched down and, using a very dim light, twirled the dial of the combination lock on the cellar door. Her heart was racing. If the combination had been changed, the operation could be in jeopardy. She’d have to go through the whole process of cracking the four-digit lock once more. Time was not on her side.

As she rotated the dial to 25, a small but defined click told her that the lock was open. She stood up and waved the light towards the front door. This was the signal that the team had been waiting for. All of the team, apart from one of the two Sergeants, a Constable and the Chief Constable, crept up the stairs.

Dido noticed how silently the team moved. She was impressed. Once they had all disappeared upstairs, the three remaining police officers, led by Dido, headed down the steps and into the cellar. It was in total darkness. Dido knew where the light switch was. She found it in the dark, but the plan called for her to wait until they received a signal that the suspect had been apprehended.

The signal wasn’t long coming. Two very unhappy men were in custody. Dido could hear a commotion coming from upstairs. She switched on the lights.

There in front of them were the three cells. Two young women were occupying two of the three. The cell doors were shut and probably locked. The Chief Constable joined the team at the door to the cellar. Despite seeing the photos that Dido had taken of the cellar, seeing it for real was a shock. Her loathing of Fox went to another level at the sight of the two victims.

She directed the team to stand back in the shadows while she and Dido talked to the hostages.

The chief nodded to her two sergeants. One moved forward and found the keys to the cells, just where Dido had said they would be.

The two officers moved to the cell doors and, as quietly as possible, opened them. Two very scared girls woke up. They both cowered in the back of their cells. Seeing people dressed all in black must have been an even worse experience than they were used to.

The Chief Constable went into one cell. Dido, the other. The plan was for the two women to spend some time calming the girls before they were transported to a secure site in Central London where they could get some much-needed medical attention.

Dido took off her balaclava and approached the girl in the left-hand cell.

“Shhhhhh,” she said quietly.
“We are here to take you to safety.”

“Nooooooo…” cried the girl.
“It is not time. He said, one more week.”

To Dido, this meant a lot.
“He has been arrested. We are the Police.”

“Fuck off,” said the girl.
“I was fucked by two of your lot last week. They were evil. My bum is still sore…”

“I’m not going to hurt you. I was held here just like you by ‘Him’. I got lucky and escaped.”

“Fuck you.”

“No, lady. No one is going to fuck me in the front, if you know what I mean?”

Dido’s revelation shocked the girl.
“Are you for real?”

“Yes. I am for real.”

The girl didn’t say anything but responded with a small nod of her head.

A few seconds later, she said,
“Debs, they seem to be real cops. At least they aren’t men.”

Dido wasn’t going to argue. Getting them safe and secure was the prime goal of this part of the operation.

For the Chief Constable, this was the sort of raw policing that she missed, but there was no going back to those days, she had the whole force to think about after this operation was over.

Just then, one of the officers assigned to the arrest of Fox gently knocked on the cellar door. The chief looked up and saw who it was. The officer was the Inspector who had led the team to arrest Fox.

“I won’t be long,” she said to the girls quietly before leaving the cell and talking to the officer.

Her face turned white when she heard what he had to say in her ear.
“Call the firearms officers in to take control of the weapon. When they have it bagged and tagged, they are to personally take it into evidence and, importantly, get it processed for prints without delay. I want everything timestamped and in the evidence log. Understood?”

“Yes, Ma’am.”

The chief returned to the girls.

“Why did you leave us?” asked one of them.

“I’m the chief constable and their boss. I am responsible for everyone’s safety, including yours.”

“Thank you,” said the girl.

She and Dido spent almost an hour talking gently to the two girls. They moved them into the unused cell so that there would be minimal DNA contamination. Gradually, they relaxed and began to converse with the two ‘women in black’.

Finally, the Chief said,
“Are you ready to leave when the transport arrives?”

The older one, who was clearly the leader of the two, replied,
“We don’t have any shoes. He said it was to stop us from wandering off. That happened last week. Before that, we were forced to wear high heels all day and night, but I think that our feet had outgrown the old shoes because they were very painful to wear.”

“Don’t worry,” said Dido.
“We have something for you to wear.”

Dido pulled out two white ‘Crime Scene’ suits from her backpack.
“There will be other people wearing these, so you won’t look out of place.”

The original plan was for the SOCO team to arrive before the girls were taken from the site, but it looked like that was not going to happen.

Slowly, the two girls put the suits on. Despite them being the smallest size available, they were far too long in the leg and arm. Dido had come prepared with pre-cut lengths of string. She tied up the legs and sleeves so that they could walk without being in danger of tripping over. They had also come prepared with some flight slippers, thanks to the Chief Constable’s husband.

“Ready?” asked the Chief.

They both gave nods of their heads.

The chief spoke into her radio for several seconds.

“Our transport will be here in ten minutes.”

“Where are you taking us?” asked the older girl.

“Somewhere where ‘he’ can’t get to you. Keeping you safe is what matters to us,” said Dido.

The Chief Constable added her support.
“Listen to her, girls. This young lady is the real deal. She survived being here and has helped us arrest both him and his son. From now on, he is history.”

The body language of the two girls, broadcast loud and clear, was that they were not entirely convinced. What was clear to both Dido and the Chief was that the two had developed a strong bond while they had been together.

Dido took the Chief aside and said,
“Do you think that there will be any DNA from those two cops that they talked about?”

She smiled at Dido.
“That is just what I was thinking. There is no harm in asking.”

“They won’t know what DNA is,” said Dido.

The chief nodded her head.
“I’ll leave it to you to ask. In a way that they can relate to…”

Dido grinned.
“Thanks, Chief.”

Dido looked at the two girls. They were holding each other very close.

“Girls, I know that this might be hard for you to answer, but these cops who were here… did they leave anything behind? Did you use anything to clean up the mess?”

The younger one cowered back at the mention of the police, but the older one pointed at a wastebasket that was at the rear of the cell that she’d occupied.

The Chief Constable stood up and addressed the young constable who was standing guard outside the room containing all the Operation Chesil evidence. He was looking distinctly uncomfortable. Seeing this crime scene had made him physically sick. He had managed not to throw up, but only just.

“Sergeant, Constable, I want the two of you to take that wastebasket in its entirety into evidence and make sure it is handled properly. Get it into an evidence bag and tagged before it leaves here. We have to maintain the chain of custody. I want two officers with it at all times until it is handed over to forensics, so we need someone to watch this area. Constable, please get Sergeant Michaels to come down here.”

The constable disappeared up the stairs. He returned a minute later with the Sergeant.

“Sergeant Michaels,” said the Chief.
“I want you to stand guard down here until the SOCO Teams arrive. It might be some time, but this part of the crime scene could be the key to obtaining convictions.”

“Yes, Ma’am. Understood.”

“Good. Ms Pleasance and I will be escorting these two ladies to a place of safety as soon as their transport arrives. I don’t need to stress the importance of the evidence here. If the evidence goes missing or it gets contaminated, I will make it my life’s work to drum you out of the force. Do I make myself clear?”

“Yes, Ma’am. Very clear,” replied Sgt Michaels.

She then addressed the uniformed officers.

“When you are relieved by SOCO or get the evidence safely logged and processed, I want you to go home and take the day off. I expect to see you in my office at 09:00 on Tuesday, ready to dictate your report on the operation. Until then, you are to speak to no one, even those here tonight, about the operation. Do you understand this?”

“Yes, Ma’am. It is all clear.”

“Good.”

Those in the cellar waited for the signal that the transport was here. Despite knowing that the place would never again be used for sodomy, the place gave Dido the heebie-jeebies. It had been years since she’d escaped, but the place still affected her. It had been different when she and Trish had broken in. Dido reasoned that it must be talking to the victims that had triggered her emotions and memories of her years of abuse by Fox and friends.

She mentally went through the steps that her shrink had given her to ward off a potential PTSD attack. As she did so, her body began to relax, and the tension in her neck subsided. She was ready for the next phase of the operation to begin.

A signal was received telling the Chief that their transport had arrived. Dido and the chief then guided the two girls out of the cellar and across the lawn to where a car was waiting. Trish and Chrissy were there to take over. Dido had previously briefed the two girls that one of those taking them to safety was also like them and that the other was a young female police officer who was fully briefed on what ordeals they had gone through.

Neither of the two victims wanted to be left with two new women, but when they were told that those women would stay with them for the rest of the day, they relaxed.

John Proudfoot drove the four away into the night just before 05:30. For the Chief and Dido, their day was not yet done. His BMW was accompanied by three other BMWs from the traffic division of the Hertfordshire force. One car carried firearms officers. The convoy would ‘Blue Light’ their journey into London. No one was taking chances with these victims.

The initial operation at the house for the team wound down a couple of hours later. A team of officers would stay on site until the SOCO teams arrived just after dawn.

The chief and Dido were driven away from the scene in her official car. The adrenaline high that Dido had been on ended before they returned to the hotel where the operation had been launched. She was fast asleep. The Chief looked at this strange woman. While she felt sad for what she had been through, she admired Dido as a person. She would have Dido on her CID team any day of the week. The sheer level of professionalism that she had shown was way more than she would have expected from a victim of the men. Her determination to put them away for a long, long time impressed her. That was all down to the hours of work that John Proudfoot had put in with Dido in the early days, but the chief didn’t know about that. All she saw was a young woman who had been kept prisoner, doing her hardest to make sure that her abuser would never see the outside of a jail cell again, and that made her someone special in her eyes.

The Chief instructed her driver to take Dido to wherever she wanted to go. Dido’s statement could wait a day or so. For the time being, Dido’s part in the Police and CPS case against Fox was over. The keywords were ‘For the time being’. The formalities of making official statements and then the rigours of the trial were yet to come for Dido. The Chief knew how much of a bastard Fox could be to witnesses. She wasn’t sure if Dido could survive a full broadside from Fox in court. The Chief didn’t know about her being a student at the university where Fox taught. She didn’t need to know that at this stage.

Dido called Trish when she arrived at John’s home. The two victims had been checked over by women doctors. The older one was now fast asleep in a private room. Chrissy was sitting with the younger of the two victims, and Trish was going to return after a natural break.

After their hellos, Dido listened to Trish.

“I expected as much. Those two children will need to be watched over carefully until Fox has been charged and remanded. The Chief Constable hinted that a safe house had been prepared by the NCA somewhere outside London,” said Dido.

“Thanks, Trish,” said Dido as she ended the call.

John had waited patiently for the call to end.
“Trish says that they will be needed until the evening and that there are six armed officers on the ward,” said Dido.

“That is to be expected given the history of the accused. Now, Dido, off to bed with you, and that is an order. You did well, girl. The Chief herself texted me praising your professionalism.”

Dido smiled at John. It had gone as well as she could have expected.

An exhausted but satisfied Dido went to bed just as people were rising for a new day and looking forward to Christmas. The only present Dido wanted was to see Fox and his son remanded without bail to Belmarsh pending their trial.

It had been a day to remember for Dido, John, Chrissy and Trish, but none of them were celebrating. There was a lot more work to do before Fox would see the inside of a Court at the Old Bailey for the last time.

[At the home of Mr Fox and his Son early Monday morning]

The SOCO team was assembled for a briefing. More than a few were yawning. It was not yet 06:00.

“I want this place taken apart. Every nook and cranny. Check the walls and under the floors. Who knows… there could even be secret rooms,” said Detective Chief Inspector Clive Pascoe.

He had been appointed as Senior Investigative Officer (SIO) for the crime scene by the Chief Constable herself, now that Fox and his son were in custody. That name alone would send a message to everyone at the house. There would be no messing around if he could help it.

“Given the obvious importance of this property for the Chief Constable herself to lead the raid and arrest, I have one order. Do it by the book. No cutting corners or else. Everyone is to be double-gloved. I don’t want any DNA contamination that could come back and bite us at trial.”

His voice wavered. This wasn’t the first SIO role that he’d had, but the enormity of it was just sinking in.

The two SOCO teams were all that the force possessed, but those were the orders of the Chief, so he wasn’t going to argue. It was a mess because he had only found out about the operation after the two suspects had been arrested and carted off to God knows where in London. He did not like the ‘need to know’ policy that had been the first item in the briefing he’d received over an early breakfast meeting with the Chief.

It was only after that briefing from the Chief Constable herself had concluded that DCI Pascoe began to understand the ramifications of what had gone on at the house. The mention of possible serving Police officers being part of what had been going on made him sick to his stomach.

The DCI came out of the meeting determined to make his part of the operation a success. He’d begun to understand the need to keep the lid on this investigation for as long as possible. As SIO, it was his job to manage the work of the specialists who were doing the hard work.

As he spoke, he began to get into his stride. After a fairly nervous start, his confidence rose.

“As I said, I want everything you do here done by the book. The Chief Constable herself impressed on me that very thing earlier. The resident of the property is a top London Barrister. He’s facing charges of unlawful imprisonment of two children and sex trafficking, to name a few. Neither I, nor the Chief want any evidence thrown out on a technicality. Bag, tag and catalogue everything. I want double signatures on the evidence bags, plus photographic evidence of each record. Don’t forget to include the timestamp and detailed location on every bag. If you don’t, then DS Jacobsen will be after you, and her bite is worse than her bark, as I am sure that you already know. Does everyone understand the rules?”

No one objected, so he carried on.

“Team 1, you are responsible for the cellar. That is where I think that we’ll find the most evidence. From what I have been told by the entry team, two young girls were being held captive there and made to perform oral and anal sex to a variety of males. DNA will be everywhere, so do your best to obtain clean samples, but if you can’t, then… just do your best. Plus, there is a room that contains a lot of sensitive crime data from the boys in the Met. Some of the photos in that room are not for the faint-hearted. We should treat the cellar as two separate crime scenes. One for that room and one for the rest of the cellar. Everything, and I mean everything in that room has to be photographed before bagging and tagging and is to be kept separate from the other evidence. Those are the orders of the chief herself.”
He took a breath before continuing.

“I have it on good authority that there is a leak in the team where those records originate. We need to play our part in finding out who it is, but that is of secondary importance to the cells and the rest of the cellar. As I said, there may well be DNA from the people who abused the two girls. One of them has been captive for two years, but we know that the place has been used for abuse for well over ten years. The last thing we need is evidence being ruled inadmissible when it comes to trial, so take your time, do it right and don’t cut corners. Those are the orders from the Chief Constable herself. She was here as SIO for the arrest and rescue of the latest victims last night, which I am sure is a sign of just how important the job that each and every one of you will do here is.”

“For the team in the cellar, there are, according to the Chief, two officers down there waiting for us. They are guarding some critical evidence. The SOCO team’s first job is to take ownership of that evidence and get it sent off for priority processing. The chief hopes that it may identify at least one of the people who came here just a few days ago and sexually abused two children.”

“The team covering the rest of the house start at the top and work down. We know that the owner of the house loved to take videos of the abuse. There has to be a place that contains at least one set of equipment for recording those acts of depravity. That location needs to be found. When it is, secure it and call in the electronics techs. We have no idea if the devices are booby-trapped. We don’t want the first attempt at accessing it to self-destruct. This is not ‘Mission Impossible’, but it is close.”

His attempt at a joke fell flat on its face.

“Finally, if you run into any issues, do not hesitate to come in search of me or my replacement. Do everything by the book and take your time. We, as in the Chief herself and myself, do not want any evidence, no matter how small, to be ruled as inadmissible when we come to trial.”

There were several groans from the team. The DCI took this as a good sign.

“The leak may well have left DNA or Fingerprint evidence on the items in that room. It would be nice for the Chief to get one over on the prima-donnas in the Met or, even better, the NCA.”

“Team 2, the rest of the house is yours, apart from the lock on the cellar door and the front door. We had some assistance that allowed us to make a silent entry into the house. That help came from an informant. The Chief’s orders are to keep the identity of the informant out of the records, and that includes DNA and fingerprints, although I have it on good authority that this person wore gloves, but we are to take no chances.”

Then, he addressed four uniformed constables.

“The rest of you, once it gets properly light, I want a search of the grounds. Mark anything even remotely suspicious, and we will get SOCO to look at it when they have finished with the house. Don’t be afraid of failing. It is better for something to be ruled out than we were to miss something important. If you have doubts, do not hesitate to come to me and ask. I will not bite even for stupid questions. We must not miss anything important or not. Those are the orders from the Chief herself.”

The DCI took a deep breath.
“Any final questions?”

No one said a word.
“Good. Go to it. I’ll be in the mobile command centre, provided the transport people can get it up the drive. Take your time. There will be food and drink on tap in an hour, so take regular breaks. The mobile loos should be here around 09:30. I cannot impress on you enough just how much the Chief wants this done properly. DS Jacobsen will be collating all the evidence into the record. Don’t wait until you are done to give her everything. Take regular breaks and give her something to do while you get some air.”

There were no more questions.
“Ok, get to work people. I’m available for any questions or help.”

With the teams going about their tasks, the DCI was at something of a loose end until the evidence started to be processed. He’d rambled a bit and repeated himself in his attempt to make sure that he’d missed nothing of importance in his briefing. It wasn’t perfect, but it was the best that he could do under the circumstances.

Until the evidence came in, he was at a bit of a loose end.

He looked down at his mud-splattered shoes. For a man who prided himself on his appearance, he scolded himself for not wearing boots for the operation. He went outside, sat in his car and was about to take his shoes off and give them a clean when one of the SOCO team came running out of the house and made straight for the DCI. The rest of the SOCO team followed suit, carrying armfuls of evidence bags. They all headed for the command centre to deposit the evidence into the record. It seemed that the house was being evacuated. The SOCO teams had been at work for less than five minutes.

DCI Pascoe waited for one of the SOCO leads to tell him what was going on. He knew from past operations not to get in their way. The lead of the team working in the cellar came to him, and breathing heavily, he said,

“Sir, we need the Bomb Squad. We have discovered a whole load of explosives down in the cellar that appear to be connected to a mobile phone.

The DCI’s day just went from crazy to diabolical.
“How do you know that it is viable explosive material?”

“Sir, I did two tours of Northern Ireland with the Home Office forensic teams in the early 2000s. We still had bombs from IRA splinter groups to deal with. The explosive here is marked just like the sort of thing we encountered over there.”

The DCI thought for a moment. All he could think of was the reams of paperwork that he’d have to fill out if the place went up. After pushing that out of his mind, he said,

“Get everyone out of the house and the area around it quickly and quietly. Please, don’t let anyone panic,” said the DCI.

“Make sure that currently all bagged evidence is carried out with them and logged. Then, get it all taken back to HQ. According to the Chief, there should be a storage area in the evidence room cleared for this operation.”

“Yes, Sir,” said the SOCO officer.

The officer hesitated.

“Good god, man. Do you want to risk the place going up with everyone inside!”

The SOCO officer disappeared back into the house.

The DCI got on the Radio.
“This is DCI Pascoe. Patch me through to the Chief Super on a secure line.”

“Roger DCI Pascoe,” said the operator.
The DCI made a mental note to have a word with the Sergeant who controlled the Radio Operators. ‘Roger’ was not standard operating procedure for the Hertfordshire force.

“Chief Superintendent Monaghan.”

“DCI Pascoe here Sir. We need the bomb disposal people. The SOCO team has found a load of explosives wired to blow at our crime scene. I have organised the evacuation of the building. As per protocol, I will get everyone back 100m.”

“I will make the call. Thanks for the heads up. The Chief Constable will not be happy,” said the Chief Super.

He ended the call and waited. Almost fifteen minutes went by before the Chief Super called him back.

“The MOD Bomb Squad people are reporting that it will take at least an hour to get from Chelmsford, so stay patient but keep alert DCI,” said the Chief Super.

“I will, sir.”

“Good. Now, get everyone well away from the building.”

“Yessir.”
It had already been done. Now, it was time for him to get control of the scene and hope that the house didn’t blow up before the specialists arrived.

DCI Pascoe left the command centre and took control of the melee that was going on outside.

“Everyone back at least 100 metres. Get all your vehicles out of the drive, but leave room for the Bomb Disposal Team to get to the house.”

“Sir,” said one of the officers.

“Yes. What is it?”

“The team you detailed to search the grounds.”

The DCI had forgotten all about them.
“I will alert them. Now, get you and your vehicles well off the property. At least 100 metres away, but don’t block access for the Bomb Squad.”
He’d just said that, but it would not help to remind them how important access was to the Bomb Disposal Team.

“Yessir.”

With a sigh, the DCI went in search of the officers who were searching the grounds.

Once the property and all the adjoining ones had been evacuated, the DCI had to manage the twenty-odd SOCO officers while they waited for the Army team to arrive.

His last order was for the already collected evidence to be sent to Police HQ for processing. He didn’t want to risk what little had been collected being blown up. A Police Van with that evidence left the scene a few minutes later.

[At a Police Station in Central London]

“Where is my brief?” shouted Jonathon Fox for at least the twentieth time.
He was complaining to the Custody Officer.

“Mr Fox, you made the call when the custody Sergeant booked you in. From what he told me, your brief said that he would be here in two hours as he was about to appear in court on a remand case. That time has not yet expired,” said the Sergeant who was supervising the detention and questioning of the two prisoners.

“I’m not saying a word until I have had access to my brief.”

“That is your right. The clock regarding your immediate detention will start once you have had an opportunity to obtain legal advice, as is the law, which you know very well.”

“In the meantime, can I offer you some water?”

Fox glared at the sergeant. The loathing he had for the officer was clear for all to see. The Sergeant had seen it all before and ignored the prisoner.

Twenty minutes later, the phone rang. It was answered by the Sergeant.
“Yes, this is he.”

“He has. Good. Send him through.”
After putting the phone down, he addressed the prisoner.

“Good news, Mr Fox, your legal representative has arrived. When he arrives, I will leave the two of you alone to confer. Knock on the door when you are done. Then I’ll get you moved to the interview room.”

Mr Fox glared at the Sergeant once more. He knew the process and also knew that the Custody Sergeant was doing everything by the book just to make doubly sure that Mr Fox could not wriggle out of any charges on a technicality.

“Remember, knock on the door when you have finished conferring,” said the Sergeant.

He left Mr Fox and his lawyer, a pale-faced man who was wearing a 3-piece suit, complete with a pocket watch and went by the name of Mr J.G. Reeder.

“Where is your phone?” demanded Mr Fox almost as soon as the door had closed behind the Sergeant.

“Why? Who are you calling?”

“Give me your phone. I want to send a text.”

Reluctantly, Mr Reeder handed over his phone.
Mr Fox quickly composed a text message and hit ‘send’. Then, he waited for the word ‘delivered’ to appear. After almost five minutes, he lost his temper.

He threw the lawyer’s phone against the wall.
“Fuck!”

The lawyer went to retrieve his phone. The screen was cracked in several places. The lawyer shook his head and began to pack his briefcase.
“What the fuck are you doing?” demanded Fox.

“Mr Fox, I am going to have to withdraw my services. I cannot sit by and watch you destroy my property for no good reason.”

Mr Reeder stood up, and after gathering his belongings, he knocked on the door.

“I’m done with Mr Fox. I can no longer represent him.”

The Sergeant resisted smiling. His eyes were fixated on the damaged phone.

“Please come with me, Mr Reeder. Mr Fox, I will arrange for a duty solicitor to attend as soon as possible. Do you have anyone in mind with you being a Barrister and all that? If you don’t have anyone, then I’ll call in the duty solicitor. As you know, this is all according to the rules of custody,” asked the Sergeant.

“Fiona Markham. Give her a call. She was a pupil of mine when I was a full-time Barrister. Her number should be in the Legal Aid directory… and make it sharpish.”

After closing the door to the cell where Mr Fox was being held, the Sergeant asked Mr Reeder,
“Did he wreck your phone?” asked the office as he noticed the damaged phone.

“He did, and I only bought it last week.”

“If you don’t mind me asking… now that you are not representing him, why?”

“He sent a text, and from his reaction, I don’t think that it was delivered.”

“Can I see the number?”

Mr Reeder thought for a moment. Then he nodded his head.
“I don’t see why not, as I am no longer his legal representative.”

Mr Reeder showed the Sergeant the text on his phone.

The Sergeant thought for a few seconds before saying,
“Normally, I would take steps to obtain a warrant to impound the phone as evidence, but I know that there could be client confidential data on it. How about I take a photo of just the message and the number? I’ll get it printed, and then you can sign the print stating when, why and how the damage was obtained. That way, there can be no breach of confidentiality concerning your other clients, but please do not delete the message. We may need it as evidence later, but a judge will make the appropriate order to guarantee the safety of your client data should that happen.”

“Sergeant, you must have read my mind.”

Once the photos had been taken, printed, authenticated, and Mr Reeder shown from the building, the Sergeant made a call to the DCI, who would have been interviewing Mr Fox when he’d finished his initial discussion with his legal representative.

“Sir, the elder Fox tried to send a text using his lawyers’ phone. When it didn’t go through, he wrecked the phone. I have a photo of the message and the number that he tried to send it to. The photo was authenticated by the lawyer who withdrew from representing him because of the incident.”

“I’m on my way as soon as I get someone to relieve me. I can’t leave the prisoners alone.”

Then and only then did the Custody Officer begin the search for Mr Fox’s next legal advisor, Fiona Markham. As he had not had the chance to confer with a legal representative, the clock on his detention had not yet started. At the moment, he was still in the ‘helping police with their enquiries’ stage. Only when it was decided to charge him and or his son, would they be formally processed and their fingerprints taken.

[back at the home of Mr Fox]

Thanks to traffic delays, it was almost two hours after the initial call before three Army vehicles arrived on the scene. DCI Pascoe made himself known to their CO, Major Schneider.

“According to my SOCO team, there is a potential bomb in the cellar. It is located under the stairs and has a mobile phone attached. My guys took one look at it and made a hasty retreat. As per SOP, I moved everyone back at least 100m and had all the adjacent properties evacuated. It is all yours, but please be careful. This is an active crime scene. There are cells in the cellar that, until a few hours ago, held two young women captive and sexually abused... I am sure that you can see why we don’t want this place to explode. There is a huge amount of possibly vital evidence relating to sex trafficking, child abuse and a gang of serial rapers.”

The Major swore under his breath.
“Thanks for the heads-up, DCI Pascoe. I will make sure that my team will only use a controlled explosion if there is no other option. We have protective blankets, but they can only do so much.”

“Thank you, Major.”

The DCI stood back and let the Army do their thing. He admired the team. From WW2 bombs to modern-day sophisticated IEDs, they tackled everything and anything. Once again, his mode of operation was to let the professionals do their job. Being an interfering busybody would not make things go quicker.

It was more than an hour later before the ‘all clear’ was given. The Army team carried out a box that contained more than 20kg of explosives.

Major Schneider came to the DCI to report.
“We were very lucky. There was a mobile phone trigger, but thanks to a leaking pipe, the circuit to the power supply for the phone shorted out, and the phone battery went dead. We bagged up the phone and all the non-explosive items and left them in the cellar. We will take the nasty stuff to our labs in Chelmsford and check it for prints. The MPs will supervise this operation and will send you the results in a few days.”

“Thank you, Major. It does seem that we got lucky. Out of interest, could you estimate what sort of damage that amount of explosive would have done to the property?”

The Major smiled.
“The house and anyone in it would have been obliterated, but thanks to that leaking pipe, you still have all the evidence intact. The person or persons who planted the device knew where it would do the most damage from a structural point of view. Any occupants of those cells would have been incinerated to dust and therefore almost unidentifiable.”

DCI Pascoe breathed a very visible sigh of relief.

“Thank you, Major. I know that the powers that be will be mighty relieved that the house is safe. Some very nasty people lived here.”

“That I can concur with. Keeping young women prisoner and abusing them is way beyond the pale. Get the evidence to convict them, and you will make my team very happy.”

He watched the Army team pack up and disappear into the gathering dusk. It was time to make a decision.

The DCI moved away from the house and made a call to the Chief Super.
“Sir, I’ve just had the all-clear from the Bomb Disposal people. But, given the time of day, I’d like to stand down the SOCO teams until tomorrow. Fresh eyes and all that.”

“Yes, sir. I will make sure that the property is guarded. The last thing we want is for the media to get inside. They have been sniffing around all afternoon. They followed the Army people to the scene. Their vehicles are hardly inconspicuous.”

“Thank you, sir. I take it that you will inform the Chief and anyone else who needs to know?”

“Right. I’ll tell the troops.”

DCI Pascoe went to where the SOCO teams had gathered.

“I have spoken to the Chief Super, and he has permitted you to delay the continuation of the SOCO exam until 08:00 tomorrow. Then we can crack on tomorrow with fresh eyes and bodies.”

None of the SOCO team objected, and they all headed off towards their vehicles. That left the small group of uniformed officers.
“Sadly, it falls to us to secure the building until the morning. Constable Simpson, can you take some food orders? We will all need something to eat.”

“Sir?” said one of the officers.
“Yes… Constable Fraser, isn’t it?”

“Yes, Sir. I have to get home. My wife works nights at the Hospital in Stevenage, and I need to be there to look after our one-year-old.”

“Good point, Constable. I think that we can manage with the four of us for the time being. I will arrange with HQ to send a couple of reinforcements ASAP.”

At 08:00 the next morning, a slightly weary DCI, Pascoe, addressed the SOCO and search teams once again.

“Just as yesterday, take your time and don’t miss anything. A conviction could turn into an acquittal if you miss something vital. Go to it, teams.”

The teams went off to resume their search.

[At the home of Mr Fox, late morning]

“Sir,” said one of the uniformed officers who had been searching the grounds.

DCI Pascoe looked up from the evidence file that he’d been examining. He had been wondering how long it would take him to write up his ‘Scenes of Crime Report’ when this was all over. With every passing minute, the time to complete seemed to extend by not one or two minutes but more like ten.

“Yes, Constable Packer?”

“Sir, we have discovered two suspicious areas on the far side of the garden.”

“Suspicious? In what way?”

“Sir… They might be graves. They are that shape but not the size of an adult.”
The four words, ‘they might be graves’ sent a shiver down the spine of DCI Pascoe. He’d never encountered a crime scene like this before, and at that moment, he hoped that he’d never have one like it again.

The possibility of two graves on the property presented DCI Pascoe with another huge problem.

“Constable, please go and tape up the ground around the suspect areas. At least 5m away from the possible graves. Red tape that and add another yellow ring a further 10m away. And be sure to keep everyone’s size 15s off the yellow area until we can get the scientists involved.”

“Sir,” said the Constable before leaving the Command Trailer.

The DCI sat for a minute, trying to decide what to do next. He was not the sort of person who liked being hands-off.

In the end, he decided to go and inspect the possible grave sites. If they were not likely graves, then nothing would be lost other than some crime scene tape. If they were, then he could report to the Chief Super that he had verified that something might be buried in the garden when requesting extra resources.

He found Constable Packer busying himself with the red tape that signified the inner part of the crime scene.

“Constable, please show me what you think are graves.”

“Sir, there and there,” said the constable.

There were two obvious depressions in the grass. They were about 80cm wide and 1.5m long. They were only a metre apart.

“Constable. Please make one red zone and expand it to 3m. Take the yellow zone out another 3m.”

“Will do, Sir!”

“Good. I’ll go and consult the experts.”

A very thoughtful DCI headed back to the Command Trailer. He was not looking forward to his next phone call to HQ.

“Chief Superintendent Monaghan,” said the DCI

“Yes, sir. The SOCO investigation inside the house should be complete by the end of the day.”

“Sir… that isn’t the real reason for my call. The team searching the grounds have found what could be two burial sites.”

“Yes, the locations are being cordoned off as I speak.”

“Sir, that is what I was thinking. We have used the people from Cambridge University on other cases where we had a possible grave site to exhume.”

“I agree, but Sir… I’m just about out on my feet. I’ve been here for thirty-six hours already.”

“I know that Sir. I would not ask to be relieved if I thought that I could do the job of SIO and not make mistakes, but both you and the chief herself impressed on me that mistakes in this investigation would not be tolerated.”

“Sir, the DCI would make an excellent temporary SIO to wrap things up here.”

“I will wait for her to arrive so that I can hand it over to her.”

“Thank you, sir. If you could give me an update on the team from Cambridge, it would be most welcome.”

“Thank you, Sir.”

DCI Pascoe sat at his desk in the command centre for a good ten minutes before venturing outside.

He saw one of the SOCO teams loading up their van. After a glance at his watch, he decided to let them go back to base and get their reports written. If the depressions did turn out to be graves, then they could wait until the next day. A different sort of SOCO investigation could be needed for the graves if… if they turned out to be graves that were remotely human in form; the coroner would also need to be involved as if this crime scene was not messy enough as it already was.

His mind was already working on the handover to DCI Suzanne Mitchell, who was coming to relieve him as SIO on-site when he smelt a whiff of perfume. None of the SOCO teams wore it or even aftershave for obvious reasons.

“Hello, Suzanne,” he said as he turned around to greet her.

“Hi there, Clive. The chief gave me a heads-up on the scene. This is a rum do, isn’t it?”

“It is not for the faint-hearted, all right. The SOCO team who covered the house apart from the cellar left an hour ago. The team in the Cellar will be… or should be done in a couple of hours. They have already bagged and tagged enough to fill two van loads with from the size of the pile of plastic boxes in the SOCO truck, at least one more full van load to come.”

“And the possible bodies? The Chief gave me a heads-up before I left.”

“We are waiting for the people from Cambridge with their ground-penetrating radar. If the site does contain one or more bodies, I’d like to suggest that we wait until tomorrow to start the dig. We’ll need to get a JCB in to excavate if they are more than a foot or so down.”

“That was my thinking. Whose place is this? Is it anyone we know?”

“If you mean know as in terms of someone with a record, then no, they aren’t. I was told by the big chief to keep their names under wrap, but as temporary SIO… we arrested the well-known if not slightly infamous barrister Jonathon Fox and his son.”

“Fuck…” said Suzanne.
“I can see why this has to be kept quiet. He is something of a media darling, especially with those Sunday Politics shows. The gutter press would go ape-shit for an exclusive on this.”

The shaking of her head told him that Fox was just about the last person to be in the frame for the list of crimes that the Chief Constable had personally briefed her on less than an hour before.

“I fully expect that the NCA will be managing the show soon, but it is our job to make their job as easy as possible. Given what I have seen here, I am in no doubt that the Foxes are, in my opinion, two sick bastards. The two child victims we rescued will never be fully functioning humans again. Someone mutilated two boys and turned them into women, minus a vagina. But… we have to be impartial while we collect the evidence.”

Suzanne looked very pale.
“Then we must not give that Fox bastard any room for wiggling out of this one. That man is as slimy as hell in court. My old superintendent in the Met received a reprimand from a judge after calling Fox an ignorant lying SOB from the witness box.”

“Ouch. Did if affect the case?”

“Fox got his client off only for him to be arrested as he walked out of the court and charged with witness tampering. He’d been blackmailing one of the witnesses who had gone to the CPS. The client was sent down for five years.”

Clive smiled.
“Then we are on the same wavelength.”

“Get off home and let me manage the scene until the morning. Get some rest. This should get you the promotion you have been angling for recently…?”

Clive shook his head.
“No way. I’m nowhere near the next in line for a Super’s job. Besides, I’m too old for it. I only have three years to go before I retire.”

Suzanne laughed.
“You are only as old as you feel, Clive.”

“This case has already put 10 years on me. Read the preliminary SOCO report on the cellar. That bastard Fox allegedly tried to blow us all to kingdom come with a bomb yesterday.”

Suzanne shivered. The thought of the place being booby-trapped gave her some horrible flashbacks. As a former Territorial Army Officer, she had seen the effects of IEDs and booby traps in Iraq. To have had that sort of device in place showed a coldness that would, in her opinion, make an iceberg seem warm.

“Are there no limits to the depths that scumbags like Fox would descend to?” said Suzanne.

“I’ll forget that I ever heard that. Fox is innocent until proven guilty by a jury. Given the truckloads of evidence, I have little doubt that an honest jury will convict him, but until then, it is all alleged crimes.”

Suzanne grinned.
“That’s Superintendent talk if ever I hear it?”

DCI Pascoe shook his head.
“The job is yours if you want it. I’m certainly not going to stand in your way. I would have just enough time to get my door nameplate put in place before it was time to retire. I’ve done my time, and now I’m looking forward to retirement.”

“And endless rounds of golf then?”

He shook his head.
“Not me. I’ve been working with the restoration people up at Duxford at weekends for a few years, researching parts and the like. That’s where I’ll be when my time in the force is up.”

“Good for you. Those Golf bores are just moaning shops. Could have, should have and all that crap… besides, they don’t like women, especially if they can play better than them.”
“Does that mean that you have been taking lessons?”

Suzanne laughed.
“No. My dad was the club pro at a course just outside Harrogate. I hit my first hole-in-one before I became a teenager. I play over at Woburn Sands off a three handicap.”

“Ouch, that would not go down well with the male members of their Golf Bores Club. They all think that women should not play the game especially if they are that good.”

“Exactly.”

The DCI gathered his things and signed out of the crime scene.

“Take your time in the morning,” said Suzanne.
“I’ll keep the site safe for your return.”

Clive ducked out before he said or did something that he’d regret.

Clive had seen far too much depravity at that house for him to relax much, and the thought of hitting the bottle appalled him. He’d seen far too many colleagues end their careers and even lives thanks to drink and drugs. His drug of choice was to run. Not long after getting home, he went out for a run. He only returned close to midnight, having covered more than 20km. Even being physically tired, he could not sleep very well. The hideousness of the case was affecting him right to his core. He kept wondering how low people could get to treat other human beings in such a sadistic and cruel way. Then there was the little matter of the bomb. That was even more evil than the child abuse. It was designed to kill anyone within the house and close by.

[The following morning]

DCI Clive Pascoe arrived back at the house late the next morning, fully prepared for the bad news about the possible graves.

Those fears were realised when DCI Suzanne Mitchell showed him the results of the ground-penetrating radar survey of the area. Two skeletons were clearly visible on the radar display.

“Have you informed the big chief?” he asked, referring to the Chief Constable.

“I finished the call with her less than five minutes ago. She’s given the go-ahead for us to get a JCB in to speed up the excavations. She’s also working with the forensic archaeologists from the Home Office to get them on-site ASAP. We are to turn everything we did up over to them.”

“That’s good news. Our SOCO teams are pretty wiped out by this case. There is so much evidence to process that when I spoke with one of the leads on my way in just now, they think that it is going to take at least a week, if not two, for a full report to be generated.”

“The CPS isn’t going to like that one little bit. They’ll want to charge them sooner rather than later, won’t they?”

“They will. Then I think we should get enough evidence together for a charge that is serious enough so that any right-minded magistrate won’t even consider the subject of bail.”

Suzanne nodded.

“Then I think the charge of unlawful imprisonment of two minors should be the one to go for or, the weapons charge. Finding a gun in his bedroom is in my opinion a slam dunk especially if his prints are all over it which from the report, puts it as being in his bedside cabinet drawer alongside two boxes of hollow point ammo. That alone should be enough for ten years in a Cat A prison.”

Clive wasn’t so sure.
“I can see that you are not happy?”

“I couldn’t sleep very well last night, so I went digging into Fox’s old cases where he was the lead defence barrister. Two of them involved unlawful imprisonment, and he got them both dismissed for lack of evidence. One of them is very similar to this case.”

Suzanne looked surprised.
“Did they involve children?”

“No. While it shouldn’t make a difference, it can only work in our favour. I hope that the CPS are aware of them and how he conducted the defence in that case.”

“Let’s hope so… for everyone’s sake,” said Suzanne.

Clive decided to change the subject.
“Did you get any media incursions last night?”

“Only the one. Some slimeball from one of the gutter press tried getting into the cellar by posing as a SOCO team member an hour after the last one had gone home. He’s in a cell in Hertford as we speak, charged with impersonating a police officer, assault and resisting arrest. One of the SOCO team got the drop on him and will have a black eye for her troubles. This is not the first time this scumbag has tried this trick. He got 6-months suspended for two years last time and…”

Suzanne smiled.
“That two years is not up until the end of next month.”

Clive returned the smile.
“He’s going down for the full six months regardless. Good work, Suzanne.”

“Just a small dent in the number of crimes that we are dealing with here. From what he claimed, he was acting on a hunch, given all the police activity at the house. The Custody Sergeant will be presenting a deaf ear to his requests for the next 12 hours. That gives us a window before he spills the beans to the world.”

“Then, we’d better get it done, or we’ll need to call in the army to stop some of those media types. This is one heck of a case,” she commented.

“True, but it beats the run-of-the-mill knife crime that seems to dominate our caseload these days…”

“I’ll agree with you on that one.”

Suzanne handed Clive a sheet of handwritten notes.
“That is the current state of play. Nothing has been done inside the house since you and the SOCO teams called a halt yesterday. The Radar people found an anomaly near the house when they were setting up and calibrating their GPR kit. The image they identified is on the board.”

Clive read through the list. Nothing was much of a surprise to him, given their recent discussion. To him, that was a sign of a good officer. Talk about the situation and have the paperwork to back it up.

Then he turned to look at the image of the anomaly. He’d watched far too many episodes of ‘Time Team’ to get excited by a GPR anomaly, but the shape of this interested him.

“They had calibrated their device on the drains from the house. Then they moved towards the red zone and had only gone a couple of steps when they saw this. They think that it is metal and buried less than 10cm down. The location is marked by a single paving slab half buried in the grass. If I were a betting woman, and I’m not, I’d say that the slab is a marker for whatever is underneath it.”

“Thanks, Suzanne. I’ll get the experts to have a look at this first. We don’t want some sodding great JCB obliterating this location just to get at the skeletons.”

“It sounds like you are back on board. I’ll relieve you at six this evening. I’ve been assigned to shadow you until you are happy that we have investigated every possible bit of the house and grounds. The last thing we need, according to the big chief, is another bomb hiding away, just waiting to kill a few officers. That would not look good on her retirement clock when she goes at the end of the next year.”

Clive managed a chuckle.
“Gotcha on that. We are due to get the plans for the house from the architects later today. The place is almost identical to a dozen or more that they built in the 1910s over in Metroland [2].”

“I didn’t know that. Anyway, I’ll see you tonight.”

“Thanks, Suzanne.”

The low loader with the JCB on the back arrived a couple of hours later. Once it was unloaded, Clive supervised the archaeologists, and they began to gently dig down to the GPR anomaly. Right from the start, one of the archaeologists, Dr. Brian Palmer, said,
“That soil is not compressed and is more like compost than anything. I’d like to suggest that this thing was not buried that long ago. 1-2 years at most.

The two other experts did not disagree. Clive’s hopes of finding something significant grew.

The object turned out to be a metal box about the size of an old-time biscuit tin. It was wrapped in several black plastic bags. When the tin was opened, everyone stepped back.

They stepped back in surprise because the tin was full of gold coins.

“I’ll call the coroner,” he said after he’d recovered at least a little bit. The coroner deals with treasure trove finds.

“We called him as soon as we saw the GPR images. He’s due here later for when we unearth the skeletons, but with this find, I’ll get him here as soon as possible, some of those coins are Roman in origin while others are recent issue Krugerrands,” said Dr Palmer.

Clive lifted up the tin. He guessed that it weighed at least 20 kilos. 20 kilos of gold, was worth more than he’d earn several lifetimes as a police officer.

He made a decision.
“Constable Petrie, when the photos of the tin and its contents have been taken, I want you to bag it up and take it into the command trailer and stand guard on it as if your life depends on it. I’ll send Sergeant Dunn to assist you shortly. It is to be handed to the coroner and only the coroner. Then you are to escort him and it to safekeeping at Police HQ. We do not want even one coin going missing. Understood?”

“Sir,” said the rookie constable.

The archaeologists took a lot of photos of the tin and its contents before the constable carried the tin towards the command trailer.

After the excitement of finding a hoard of gold, the next hour was something of an anti-climax. The Archaeologists and the JCB operator worked together very closely and slowly. As every bucket of earth was removed, it was gently piled onto a large groundsheet. One of the teams from Cambridge checked it over before another bucket was removed from the ground.

The leader of the Cambridge team, Professor Trevor Young, commented after the dig had reached 1 metre,
“This soil has been removed and replaced within the last ten years. The subsoil and topsoil are all mixed up. Then, there is the presence of leaves in the spoil heap. Leaves that have fallen from an oak tree and dried out take a lot of time to rot down. I’d revise the time since this was last dug as being approximately four years ago. The other thing is that this hole was dug by hand. A machine such as a JCB leaves a distinct pattern on the edges. This is different from a pickaxe and spade. I can see those artefacts clearly where the undug edges have collapsed into the hole.”

“Thanks for that,” said DCI Pascoe.

They’d gone down almost 1.5 metres when Professor Young called a halt to the mechanical digging.

“The Radar trace indicates that what we are after is just 50mm away. We will dig out the rest by hand when we have excavated the other grave to the same point.”

The DCI was about to question this but remembered that the Cambridge team had done this sort of thing before. The Professor saw the frown on the DCI’s face.

“Once we get to the same spot with the other grave, we can erect a tent over the area. That will keep the prying eyes off what we are doing besides, the weather forecast for tonight is rain. We have to keep that off the evidence.”

“This bit of the crime scene is your show. You won’t have any pushback from me about protecting the evidence,” said the DCI, hoping to appear professional.

The tent went up a little over three hours later, and the digger was retired to the driveway. The now white-suited dig team from Cambridge sprang into action. Lights and an evidence table were quickly set up inside the tent before the first member climbed down into the first grave.

More than an hour passed before the team emerged from the hole. Several buckets of earth had been removed for a more detailed inspection.

“It is the body of a child. We estimate that the age is around ten years old. The corpse is wrapped in black plastic bags, but the process of burying the body caused some tears in the plastic.”

One of the team was busy photographing the grave.

“I’d better call the coroner. They are expecting a callback. He was here earlier to collect the coins,” said the DCI.

“I’d hold off on that until we have uncovered the other body. We should only be an hour or so.”

DCI Pascoe looked at his watch. Any thoughts he might have had about getting an early night were fast disappearing.

“Ok. I’m going back to the command centre to report to the Chief Constable. What time do you think that you will be here too tonight?”

“Well, past Chinese time? I hear that there is a good place in town?”

DCI Pascoe managed a smile.
“I’ll arrange for some food to be delivered in about an hour.”

He retired to the command centre and organised the delivery of food by a police car when Suzanne arrived to take over.

“Two bodies and around 20 kg of gold coins so far,” said the DCI.

She shook her head.
“I have some news. Fox and his son were charged with illegal weapons possession and illegal possession of C4 explosive material and the means to make an explosive device earlier this afternoon. They were remanded in custody to Belmarsh. A press release was made available just before the six o’clock news. The media is going bonkers. Some are calling it all a hoax and a stitch-up. Fox is too honest to be guilty of anything like this,” she commented.

DCI Pascoe sighed.
“That is just the start, or I hope that it is.”

This job was proving to be far bigger than anyone had expected. Dealing with paedophiles was one thing, but this was in a different league. There was so much about the victims that even he didn’t know. In his mind, this need for secrecy was way overblown, but he was prepared to go along with it. If it kept the media away, then he was happy… for now.

The team from Cambridge took a break from the food that one of the constables had gone into the nearby town to collect. They’d just finished when the coroner from Hertford arrived.

Dr Joseph Wiggins was not happy at being called back to the house long past his normal quitting time. Even the prospect of two bodies that had been buried in suspicious circumstances failed to pique his interest. In his mind, they were dead and were not going anywhere fast. It could have waited until normal office hours, but here he was on a cold night with a steady drizzle now falling, staring down into two pits at two dead bodies. The hoard of gold was, to him, far more interesting, especially the Roman coins. He’d been examining them in the dry and warm of Police HQ when the call back came in. As it was from a Chief Superintendent, he could not ignore it. Now, coins would have to wait until he’d dealt with the dead bodies.

It was wet and cold, but there were procedures to follow before he could get one of his staff to perform post-mortem examinations on the deceased.

One glance at a leg that had been exposed told him that they had been in the ground for at least four years. The only thing that got to him was the small size of the bodies. Children deserved a proper burial and not being stuffed in the ground like this. At least once he had finished with them, they could be laid to rest properly. It was his job to make that happen as smoothly as possible.

He donned a crime scene white suit and climbed down into the first grave. The glare of the arc lights cast some dark shadows. Thankfully, he came equipped with a good head torch.

After kneeling beside the first body and crossing himself, he gently eased back the now ripped black plastic bags that had encased the body. The first thing he saw was the lack of genitals. That caused him to stop dead. What the hell had he been dragged into?

The long hair and facial features indicated that the deceased was female, but the length of the femur was all wrong for someone of that age. He estimated that the person was about ten years old but had almost fully developed breasts. It was all wrong. He tried not to use the word that came into his mind. Rule 1 for coroners was never to jump to conclusions.

The plastic had preserved the skin around the head. There were clear ligature marks on the deceased’s neck. He shook his head and covered up the body as best he could before standing up and extracting himself from the grave.

“I’m not saying anything until I have examined the second body,” he announced firmly.

No one quibbled. This was his scene at the moment.

After putting on a new pair of latex gloves, he climbed down into the second grave. It told him the same story, which deepened the mystery.

Once out of the grave, he addressed DCI Suzanne Mitchell.
“The bodies appear to be of two young girls around the age of ten or eleven. I say appear because both have almost fully developed breasts, which, under normal circumstances, is unlikely to happen. There are other factors that lead me to believe that they were both born male. Until I get a post-mortem carried out, I can’t say more. The bodies can be removed… carefully and taken to the Morgue at Stevenage Hospital. I will perform a PM tomorrow. I will be assisted by Dr Moore.”

The DCI didn’t look happy, so Dr Wiggins took her aside and said,
“Those poor creatures have been mutilated. They have no genitals. Instead, there is a tattoo of a flower where their pubic hair should be. There is evidence of surgery in that area that is fairly recent, as in less than two years before their passing. Naturally, until I perform the autopsy, I can’t confirm that.”

The DCI could only utter two words.

“Fucking Hell.”

Being told about the mutilation was one thing, but being in the presence of not one but two mutilated bodies was a whole new level … of loathing for those responsible.

[1] GPR: Ground Penetrating Radar
[2] Metro-land: In the early 20th century, the Metropolitan Railway promoted development alongside their railway that ran north-west out of London.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metro-land

Dr Wiggins performed the post-mortem the next day at the Morgue in Stevenage. He had an audience of DCI Pascoe and Chief Superintendent Montgomery. The presence of the Chief Super told Dr Wiggins that these children were important to a lot of people way above his pay grade.

Once he and his assistant, Dr David Moore, had cleaned the bodies, the gruesome job of finding their cause of death could begin.

He dictated every step into a microphone as he worked.
Both bodies had decayed from their period in the ground, but Dr Wiggins was able to extract enough material for a DNA test. These were couriered to the Home Office Forensic Lab in central London.

“I would expect the results back late tomorrow,” said Dr Wiggins.

That caused the Chief Super to excuse himself. When he returned, he said,
“I’ve put a rush on the tests. We should have them back later today.”

Dr Wiggins raised an eyebrow. This was a mega-important case. He had to get this right. The hoard of coins would have to wait for another day or even a week. No one would mind in the slightest. Treasure Trove cases were never that important unless the items were of royal significance.

He finished the PM’s almost three hours later. Thanks to the X-ray system in the mortuary, he was able to declare the cause of death for both children.

“Both of them died from hanging. Their necks show all the signs of suspension. Both of their hyoid bones are broken, and the slightly older child has a fracture of the C3 and C4 vertebrae. From the formation of these and other bones in the skull, I estimate that they are both less than 10 years old.”

He let that sink in.
“Their almost fully developed breasts are natural and not implants. That could only have been achieved through massive doses of female hormones. The full toxicity screen that I ordered should show what sort of drugs they have been fed. From my limited experience with this sort of forced growth, I estimate that breasts that size take 2-3 years to develop with the assistance of massive doses of female hormones. Both subjects have intact prostates and were, therefore, born male, and I estimate that they had their male testes removed 2-3 years before their deaths. I’d say that the mutilation and the starting of female hormones were done at the same time, about two and a half years before their deaths.”

“The fact that their testes were removed means that the female hormones would have an accelerated effect on their bodies. That is evident by the size of their breasts. It also means that their risk of cancer, especially breast cancer, is much higher than normal. I did find some evidence of a small growth in one of the deceased in the scans of their bodies. I will remove it later and send it for analysis. The people who did this had no regard for these poor children.”

He moved towards their genitals.
“As I said, these children were born male. The presence of a fully developed prostate in both of them, as well as the shape of the pelvis bone, proves that beyond all doubt. The work to remove their ‘maleness’ was done professionally as their urethra has been re-routed to where it would be for a genetic female. This re-routing is standard for those undergoing a sex-change procedure. Sadly, at the time of death, both were infected with a UTI and one or more STDs. The tearing around the anus indicated frequent penetration by objects unknown.”

“If I was a betting man and I am not, and this is off the record, I’d willingly place a bet on both of them, having been sodomised by more than a few men since their ordeal began. That is just my opinion. There may be other evidence that could support that conclusion, but I am not privy to that at this stage.”

He stopped and looked at the two police officers.
“Early indications are that they are both HIV positive. I included a sample for testing in the same package as the DNA, but I don’t think that I am wrong. The older child has the worst tearing around the anal area. That can only mean one thing. I’m sure that you don’t need me to explain what that means.”

“What about the tattoos?” asked the Chief Super.

“In my opinion, they were inexpertly applied around six months or so before their demise. They are fully healed and show no signs of fading. One is of a foxglove, and the other…? I think it is a harebell, but I’d have to check a botanical text to be sure.”

“Given the foxglove tattoo, I have also asked for tests on natural poisons to be carried out. Those results should start coming through in around five days,” said the doctor as a way of summing up the post-mortem.

The DNA results came in late that night. The two ‘Jane Does’ now had names. Alun Evans from Liverpool and William Mace from Sunderland. They’d both been ‘taken’ from the street at a time that roughly tied in with the period after Dido had escaped, and their deaths were before Chrissy was captured, but he didn’t know about any other victims. Because of the variable conditions in the ground, it was difficult to put a definitive date on their deaths or burial.

DCI Pascoe wondered if they might have been infected with HIV after they had arrived at the house, and that was why they had to be eliminated. He also knew that proving death by anything other than misadventure would be difficult. That opened up a huge hole in the timeline for the DCI.

He left the morgue wondering what had happened in the time between the deaths of the two children… he was unsure about calling them girls or boys and the present. All he could think of was that a lot of unmitigated evil had gone on in that house over a lot of years. He resolved to call them girls/women in future. Someone had gone to a lot of trouble to make any appearance of maleness go away.

The DCI spend the next day overseeing the cleanup of the crime scene. His second to last task as SIO was to go over the house and make sure no bagged or tagged evidence had been left behind. There was none.

As he was supervising the removal of the SOCO trucks, the HIV test results on both bodies came in. As the post-mortem report has suggested, both deceased were HIV positive. The older one had remnants of an HIV suppression drug in her system.

Once back at the station in Hertford, DCI, Pascoe began to write up his scenes of crime report. Thankfully, he’d made a lot of memos on his phone using the voice recorder. Each one was timestamped, which saved a lot of head-scratching but, the new evidence relating to HIV had to go into that report. It meant a lot more form-filling because of the protocols that were in place to stop the spread of HIV and AIDS.

He’d gotten about halfway through the report when his desk phone began to ring. In the days of everyone having a mobile phone, those phones were mostly used for internal calls.

“DCI Pascoe,” he said when he answered it.

“Yes, Ma’am. I’m doing it now,” he said, glancing at the clock.

“I should have it finished by early evening. I’ve not long returned from clearing the site of Police equipment. As per your email of yesterday, there will be a uniformed officer present at the site until you say otherwise.“

“Yes, Ma’am, I will deliver it to you personally as soon as I have finished it.”

He hung up the phone with those frown lines on his forehead, getting deeper by the second.

He sat back and wondered why the Chief Constable herself wanted to see his report before anyone else. The answer, along with many other questions he wanted to ask, was likely to be way above his pay grade. Nevertheless, he got back to the task at hand with renewed vigour and determined to make it as good as it could be.

A little later than he’d estimated during the phone call with the Chief, Clive Pascoe knocked on the door to her office. The HQ was almost deserted apart from the depths, where there was a modern custody suite in full operation.

“Come in,” said a voice from beyond the oak-panelled door.

The DCI had never been into this part of the HQ building before. His normal place of work was in a busy CID office. Here, the thickness of the carpet provided excellent sound-deadening properties.

He opened the door and went inside. He was surprised to find that the Chief was not alone. A pile of discarded fast-food wrappers and containers on a nearby table told him that their meeting had been a working one.

He’d never seen the officer who was with the Chief before. The insignia on her uniform jacket told him that he was in the presence of an assistant commissioner of the Met Police.

“Ah, DCI Pascoe. Please take a seat. This is ACC Prentice from our friends in the Met.”

“Ma’am,” said Clive as he sat down. He put the report on the desk in front of him.

“DCI Pascoe, I have heard a lot about you from the Chief here. It seems that you run a tight ship with your crime scene?”

“Ma’am, I could not have done it without a cast of many. Everyone played their part in getting all the evidence we could from the property, which, given the difficulties that we faced with the bomb and the two graves, my part was small. The real kudos must go to the SOCO teams.

“I was at NCA HQ earlier and saw the mound of evidence bags arriving from here. There is a whole team working through the night on cataloguing it all.”

“I was just doing my job to the best of my ability, Ma’am. I hope that I didn’t make any mistakes amongst all that craziness.”

The Chief smiled.
“So far, and please correct me if I am wrong, ACC Prentice, the NCA Team is very appreciative of your work. To double-bag and photograph everything as it came into the evidence control was a smart move. Early indications are that nothing has gone astray and that you and everyone involved will get a positive entry on your records.”

“Thank you, Ma’am.”

“That leads me to why I wanted to see you in person tonight.”

The Chief Constable smiled.

Normally, that would have sent a shiver of fear through the DCI, but after the glowing report, he was relaxed.

“The ACC would like to borrow you for the foreseeable future. What do you think?” said the Chief.

Her words surprised the DCI.
“Ma’am, as you know, I was in the Met before coming here. What would be my job?”

“DCI Pascoe, I’m here on behalf of the NCA. I’m sort of their liaison between the Met and the forces that surround the capital and the NCA. We’d like you to be part of the NCA investigation into Jonathon Fox and his son. Your experiences at this crime scene will come in very useful when we and the CPS build a case against Fox and his son. There may well be other significant figures involved with the prosecution, and we want someone from outside the Met to lead the team.”

He looked at both senior officers and just stopped his mouth from opening with surprise.

“Why me? If you don’t mind me asking?”

“DCI Pascoe,” said the ACC.
“You have a level head and a lot of common sense. The way you handled the finding of those graves and the bomb is just what we need. To be perfectly honest, a lot of the people who were recruited into the NCA in the early days are not what the Agency needs in the long term. Someone with a sensible head might just get through to them that the job is not like it is shown on TV. The role that the NCA is expected to carry out needs people who think and think again before they act. The job would be at the Detective Super rank. Are you interested?”

“Ma’am, I am interested, but I would need to know more about the role that you want me to fulfil.”

“Perfect answer,” said the Chief.
“Didn’t I tell you that the DCI would be perfect for the job? Even with that carrot, he didn’t jump at it.”

The ACC smiled.

“DCI Pascoe, I’d like you to take the day off tomorrow and then report to the NCA HQ the day after that.”

“Ma’am, the day after tomorrow is Saturday.” He stopped dead. The week had gone by in a flash.

“Perfect. I’ll meet you there… say at 10:00. Then we can talk in detail about the job I have in mind for you.”

The DCI knew that he had been backed into a corner.

“Very well. I’ll see you then, Ma’am. Chief?”

“Yes, Clive, get along home and remember to take the day off tomorrow. I’ll clear it with the Chief Super. He won’t be happy, but I’ll tell him that you may have a higher calling for the immediate future.”

DCI Pascoe went home with his mind still a mess. The meeting with the Chief Constable had muddied already murky waters.

The only bit of light, if he could call it that, was that doing a stint with the NCA in the dying days of his career could be interesting.

His last task that night was to call Suzanne.
“The Super’s job is yours,” he said.
“I’ve been seconded to the NCA for the foreseeable future, so get off your butt and apply for it before they go outside the force. I’m going to lead their investigation into Fox and his many crimes.”

There was a lot more that he wanted to say but didn’t. He’d always fancied Suzanne, but the ethics about dating an officer he was serving with had stopped him from even broaching the subject.

He drifted off to sleep that night, wondering if the secondment to the NCA might allow him to gently ask her out.

Sleep was intermittent. The memories of the crime scene would be right there in his mind for a long, long time. For once in his long career as a Police Officer, he would not be responsible for his actions should he ever get in a room alone with older Fox, it would be him facing life in prison, and he would go to his grave a happy man.