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.”