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