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.