News that Britain has finally forged an extradition pact with Brazil might make you think that our most famous resident expat, train robber Ronnie Biggs, would be choking on his pina coladas.

Not a bit of it. For the erstwhile old lag has apparently confided he?ll come quietly, muttering: ?I?ve always said I?d be happy to spend my twilight years in jail and not be a nuisance to loved ones.? This, from a man who has been on the run since helping to filch #2.6m from a Royal Mail train in 1963 and whose most arduous undertaking in the past three decades has been watching the sun set in Rio.

It could be that Ronnie is actually keen to return, not so much because he?s reconciled to a large, overdue helping of Blighty porridge but because he smells rich pickings in the burgeoning underworld of cyber crime.

London, with its legion of financial institutions and labyrinth of computer networks, is just gagging for it, as they say. Whereas once villains might have waxed lyrical over the potential of an eight-valve getaway Jag, nowadays it?s more likely to be the speed of network links: ?Gor blimey Ron, cast yer peepers over the baud on that asynchronous transfer. The Rozzers will never catch us.?

Se?or Biggs will, of course, have to evolve his style to fit the new medium. Until multimedia becomes commonplace, the usual email semaphore for facial gestures will have to suffice. Perhaps :-( for a simple, intimidating scowl during a cyber heist or, if disguise is necessary, that good old villain?s standby, the gorilla mask ? 8?.

If you?re wondering whether Biggs, now a grandfather, has the wherewithal to embark on a new career as a techno-picaroon, look no further than his home page on the Net.

Here (www.bscene.com.au/biggs) you?ll find a warm greeting from the ageing abscondee, with the opportunity not only for an electronic chat but a chance for an actual ?meet? should you happen to visit Rio, where the Cockney villain might entertain you to a barbecue ?doubtless kindled by a pile of obsolete, pre-decimal, UK banknotes. (?Throw a few more ten shillings on the fire, please luv.?)

Intriguingly, Ron?s Web page even has a competition inviting surfers to devise a perfect hideaway which would allow someone simply to vanish off the electronic map. Notes the page, a little peevishly: ?In these days of data banks, identity cards, tax file numbers and other technological methods of investigation, it?s impossible just to disappear!?

If you can offer a solution you stand to win a valuable prize, such as a vintage timetable for the Glasgow-to-London mail trains, circa early Beatles era.

Which brings me back to my central suspicion: our Ron is deliberately planning to return to Britain. From Wormwood Scrubbs (doubtless kitted out with the latest IT as part of a prisoner re-training programme) he will mastermind a colossal City blag that will make the Great Train Robbery seem like raiding a sweet jar.

Thereafter, it will be another Great Escape. Except this time the authorities will find that Biggs was never in the Scrubbs in the first instance ? he was simply logging on with a laptop from some Peckham phone box.

Maybe the ultimate hiding place will be the virtual cemetery in Clevedon, where Methodist preacher David Wilkinson has just set up an Internet site for those who?ve been cremated and so have neither tombstone nor grave.

If I were Slipper of the Yard I?d look here. And if there were signs of virtual flowers being pinched, I?d suspect Buster Edwards was also in hiding with a stall around the corner. I would slip on an electronic tag and email the pair back to Rio, with a warning not to venture either out of Brazil ?or the motherboard.