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’.