by Oliver Tidy
‘Arrogance too,’ she said, but there was no malice in it. More a professional playfulness. ‘No-one can really come to know themselves, Inspector, without professional assistance.’
‘I’ll have to take your word for it. You are the head doctor after all,’ said Romney, regaining something of his usual confidence that had ebbed a little on entering the room. ‘Personally, I’m quite happy with the person I think I am.’
She settled herself into the chair behind her desk and invited him to sit the other side of it. She was petite, well proportioned and not unattractive. Either she looked after herself and wasn’t averse to a bit of cosmetic surgery, or she was blessed with a rare stubbornly youthful complexion. Even Romney could see it wasn’t make-up. She certainly didn’t look like she could have been practising psychiatry for at least a quarter of a century. He hadn’t been lying entirely; he had expected someone older looking bearing in mind she’d been treating Edy Vitriol for twenty-five years. Or had she? Perhaps Vitriol had only been seeing her professionally for a fraction of his time on the couch.
‘So, Inspector, if you’re not here to see me as someone who can help you in a medical way, why are you here?’
Romney realised and recalled that he hadn’t discussed the purpose of his visit when he had made the appointment and was then mildly alarmed to think people might be thinking that he, a police inspector, was here seeking professional mental help. ‘I want to speak to you about a patient of yours.’
‘I prefer the term client. And surely you must know that I can’t breach confidences. It would be unethical.’
Romney smiled at her in what he hoped was a, look I know how it is, but... way. ‘I do understand, of course, but this is about a recently deceased client of yours and I’m investigating his murder. To be honest, I’m not sure how confidentiality works with the dead and whether the circumstances of his death would allow any ethic-bending. If you tell me you can’t possibly discuss any aspect of your time with him, naturally, I will have to accept that.’
‘You’re talking about Edy.’ It was not a question. She looked suddenly gloomy and she sagged a little. Romney sensed a lessening of the professional distance between them.
‘Edy Vitriol, yes.’
‘I was very sad to hear about his death.’
‘Do you mind me asking, how long you had been treating him?’
‘Twenty-five years. That’s no great ethical secret disclosed. He started seeing me soon after the tragedy.’
‘Are you able to discuss him with me, given the circumstances?’ He tried to make the request sound like a genuine appeal for assistance.
Romney could see she was searching her conscience. ‘I will help you as far as I think that I professionally can. That is to say that I’m willing to assist and not be obstructive.’
‘Thank you,’ he said, meaning it sincerely. ‘If you had been treating him for twenty-five years you must have known him very well. As well as anyone, if not better.’
‘As a psychiatrist I like to think so. I wouldn’t be much good at my job otherwise would I?’
‘I suppose not. Do you know how he died?’
‘Yes. And that he was also attacked on his front step the night before he was killed. Would it be such a leap of the imagination to assume both attacks were carried out by the same person?’
‘It seems very likely. The wounds were similar.’
For a long moment she looked very unhappy. She took a deep breath and said, ‘How do you think I might be able to help you, Inspector?’
‘As yet, we have no suspect and no apparent motive. His mother mentioned he had been seeing you and I thought that just maybe, if he had felt threatened, or been threatened, he might have discussed it with you.’
She was nodding at his logic, but said, ‘Well, I’m sorry, but I have to disappoint you and it’s got nothing to do with ethics. He hadn’t talked about feeling in danger from anyone in many years. There were times, well in the past, that people made threats against him, but Edy had mentioned nothing like that for a long time. In fact, I might be pushing the boundaries of client confidentiality but I could say that as far as I was aware, Edy’s biggest danger was Edy, or rather his demons.’ Romney let his disappointment show and his gaze wander to the shelves on the wall behind her. ‘Sorry,’ she said again.
He nodded towards the shelving and the spine of, ‘All Women Are Prostitutes’. ‘Have you read his book then?’
Doctor Puchta gave Romney a wry smile, which he liked, as though sharing a private joke that was made at someone else’s unwitting expense. ‘Of course. He was my client. It’s very important for me to be aware of and take interest in my client’s lives outside of this room. It’s core to how I can help them, especially when it relates to long-worked-for success.’
‘You didn’t say deserved success.’
‘No. I didn’t. My personal opinion of Edy’s creative output, or any of my clients’ achievements for that matter, doesn’t matter and it wouldn’t be helpful to them for me to become critical and subjective about it. Besides, literary criticism is not my area of expertise.’
‘Spoken like a true diplomat. Can I ask you, as his psychiatrist, what you thought of it? He’s dead now. It won’t hurt him.’
She continued to resist Romney’s attempt to lure her into giving a personal opinion. ‘As his psychiatrist I was solely focussed on helping Edy deal with daily life. Success can be a wonderful boost to a person’s self-esteem and feelings of self-worth. And Edy was no exception.’
‘And what about a personal opinion as a woman?’
She smiled in her dry way again. ‘Let’s just say, I didn’t find it complimentary or necessarily accurate based on personal experience.’
Romney changed tack. ‘He’d been seeing you for twenty-five years. Could you see a time when that might have stopped?’
‘Yes. When I retire to the South of France in three years time. And then I think Edy would have sought the support of another professional in my field. Edy needed to talk regularly and be listened to sympathetically by someone qualified and experienced who could help him.’
‘Who paid for his visits?’
‘Is that relevant to your investigation?’
‘No. Just interested.’
‘The NHS.’
‘How much do you charge for a session?’
‘Are you thinking of making an appointment?’
‘No, thanks. As a tax-payer, still just interested.’
She told him and managed to keep a straight face.
‘An hour?’ he almost spluttered.
‘Actually, that’s for a half-hour consultation.’
Romney realised that his mouth was hanging open so he thought that he’d better say something. ‘I’m in the wrong job.’
‘You think that it’s expensive? How much does a dealership charge you for a trained mechanic to look at your car? At least at the end of the day he gets to go home and switch off, forget about his work. There probably aren’t that many mechanics who lie awake at night wondering about clutch plates and cam-belts. As a psychiatrist that is not so easy to do. People’s problems have a tendency to stay with you. Again, it’s part of the job. A mechanic, if you’ll forgive me flogging an analogy, follows a set of instructions which have been created for him, or her, to diagnose and fix problems. It’s a simple step-by step process. Cars are all the same. People are all different and so are their minds. There is no simple procedure for helping people. Often it involves a great deal of thought and deliberation outside of the consultation period. Do you take your work home with you, Inspector?’
‘Sometimes,’ he conceded and changed the subject back to his reason for being there. ‘Over twenty-five years you must have become close.’
‘No. I never become close with my clients, Inspector. A professional distance is as important in my line of work as it is in yours, I suspect.’
‘You’ll be at his funeral?’
‘No,’ she said, with a matter-
of-factness Romney found refreshing about the subject of death. ‘Edy’s dead. What would be the point? There’s nothing that we can say to each other now.’
Romney saw her snatch a glance at her watch and understood he was probably outstaying his welcome, but it didn’t stop him. He realised he was enjoying talking to this intelligent, calm and thoughtful lady. ‘Does your practice keep you busy? I mean, is there much call for psychiatry in Dover?’
‘Inspector, there is a great call for psychiatry everywhere. If only people would lower their barriers and let professionals support them in trying to understand themselves better, I’m sure a great many of them could be spared the misery of making the same mistakes over and over again to their personal detriment and the despair of others.’ Romney was reminded of a conversation he’d had with himself recently. ‘There’s a stigma attached to the psychiatrist’s couch and until that is overcome by society as a whole it will stop people seeking and getting help. You, for example, Inspector, would undoubtedly benefit from a course of carefully structured introspection.’
‘I told you, my issues and I are quite happy together. We’ve learned to live in a sort of harmony.’
‘It’s obvious to me that you’re not being honest, of course, and covering your embarrassment with forced levity.’
‘What makes you think that? What makes you think I need help?’
‘Firstly, I didn’t say you need help, that’s what you heard, which in itself is interesting. I said you could benefit from a programme of introspection. Well, you’re a man, you are middle-aged, you are a police inspector, so you’ve probably been in the job for a few years and, statistically, it is unlikely that you’re happily married. Through your work, and the people it brings you into contact with, and the things that you’ve witnessed and experienced, you have probably developed unhealthy feelings that taint your view of the world and the way that you interact with others. You probably have a lot of suppressed emotions and frustrations. I’d imagine you have a problem forming and maintaining relationships with the opposite sex, if, of course, the opposite sex are your preference.’
Romney sat stunned with the accuracy of her appraisal, but had no intention of corroborating it. ‘So, what is it then, a problem shared and all that?’
‘Something like that. I can see you are a doubter, but it’s a truism. I seriously urge you to try it. I could offer you a free initial consultation should you ever feel tempted for some enlightenment. I could almost guarantee that you’d want more.’
‘I think I just had one. If psychiatry is meant to make the patient, sorry, client, feel better then it didn’t work.’
‘That’s because I was right. No one gets to feel better just for having a few truths exposed and faced up to, Inspector. I’ve been trying to tell you, it’s a process. But it’s worth it if you want to make the best of the life you live once.’
‘If that’s a taster I think I’d just end up depressed because I couldn’t afford you.’
‘And I would answer that you can’t afford not to. I’m going back to the car analogy. It’s what men tend to understand better. You do have a car?’
‘Of course.’
‘And you have it serviced regularly?’
‘Yes,’ he lied.
‘If you have a physical problem, do you visit your medical doctor?’
‘Yes,’ Romney lied again and felt a hot flush of guilt and anxiety at the reminder of a current condition ignored.
‘If you are prepared to seek help for life’s physical problems, why,’ she continued, apparently oblivious of the change in skin colour brought on by his change in temperature, ‘when you have a worry, an anxiety, something that bothers you mentally would you not accept that time and money spent fixing it is money well spent?’
‘Put like that it makes too much sense.’ But it also made him uncomfortable. ‘Getting back to Edy,’ he said, ‘did you know that he kept a box of ephemera on it all? His mother claims he was going to write a book on it one day.’
‘Yes. I encouraged him to. Edy enjoyed writing. It was an outlet, a release and a pleasure for him. As his psychiatrist, I believe it could have been very good for him to have engaged in such a project.’
‘Really? I’d have thought it would have been better for him to have tried to forget about it all, if it was such a constant burden to him. To get over it and move on.’
‘That’s why I’m sitting here and you’re sitting there, Inspector. One should never be encouraged to try to forget or bury traumatic experiences within the subconscious. They will always resurface one day with potentially catastrophic effects. It is far better to try to deal with problems: face up to them and work them through to some sort of position of understanding. Only then can one truly begin the healing process and hope to move on.’
‘Even if it takes twenty-five years?’
‘Even if it takes a lifetime.’
‘Did he see you and your service as a form of prostitution do you think?’
‘Oh yes. He made no secret of it, but we could discuss it like adults. He had his opinion and I had mine. You haven’t read the whole book, have you?’
‘No. I’m finding it harder to read than I think it would have been to write.’
‘I suggest you do.’
‘Are you aware of his website?’
‘Edy had a website?’ For the first time since Romney had walked into her office Doctor Puchta seemed wrong-footed.
‘Yes. My sergeant described it as more of a porn-site, actually. It was a work in progress. Nothing published to the Internet, yet.’ Something of the positive and controlled aura that the doctor had created for herself had waned. ‘So, he didn’t tell you everything then?’
‘Clearly not.’ And clearly this made her unhappy. She looked at her watch a little more pointedly.
‘Edy’s mother said he was on anti-depressants and had been for twenty-five years and that you prescribed them for him.’
‘That’s true. Edy couldn’t function without them.’
‘It’s a long time to be on medication, don’t you think? Had it become a dependency?’
‘Yes and yes. But it’s not unprecedented and it helped his condition.’
‘Did his condition have a name, incidentally?’
‘I believe that Edy was suffering from an extreme and unshakeable mixture of Excessive Guilt and Bereavement Disorder. Berger identifies five types of griever: Nomadic, Memorialist, Normalizer, Activist and Seeker. I won’t bore you with the details of each. In my professional opinion, Edy was stuck as a Nomad. He couldn’t come to terms with the sense of loss he felt for the lives the disaster claimed and that, in my opinion, he felt irrationally responsible for.’
The intercom buzzed on her desk. The ice-maiden told the good doctor that her next appointment had arrived. Romney took his cue and rose. Doctor Puchta stood also and they shook hands.
‘Thank you for your frankness and your time,’ said Romney. ‘I appreciate it.’
‘You’re welcome, Inspector. And my offer and advice still stands.’
‘I’ll think about it,’ he said and he was smiling at her. As he put his hand on the door-knob, he turned to her and said, ‘Do you practise what you preach?’
‘Pardon.’
‘Do you get on the couch yourself?’
‘Of course. It would be a little hypocritical of me if I didn’t, but that’s not why I do it. I know that it helps me. I have a colleague in Maidstone who I see once a month and once a month she visits me. It’s extremely therapeutic to talk to someone who can ask the right questions and can make some sense of the answers. It’s like a good massage for the brain.’
DI Romney left the appointment realising he’d had as interesting a conversation as any he could remember for a long time. In all his life he’d rarely met a woman whose mind interested him more than her body. He knew this smacked of conceited arrogance, but it didn’t make it any less true.
As he walked back to his car, he found himself thi
nking that a free half-hour confidential session might not be such an anathema to him. And then he reflected on the sobering thought that as his meeting had taken him no further forward in his investigation, he’d just wasted half-an-hour of police time.
***
16
All of his little team were present at their desks when he returned via lunch. He called a meeting for thirty minutes later. Plenty of time for everyone to use the toilet, wash their hands and get in a three course meal, if they wanted to, he said, speaking in Grimes’ general direction.
‘Who told Superintendent Falkner where I’d gone?’ he said, when they were all sitting comfortably.
‘I did,’ said Grimes.
‘Thanks very much.’ Grimes looked pleased with himself. ‘But do me a favour next time, will you? Can you tell him why I’ve gone to see a psychiatrist? I’ve just spent an awkward ten minutes trying to convince him that it was not a personal visit but business related to a case. I still don’t think he believes me.’ Marsh made a noise behind her hand that Romney took for amusement. ‘On that topic the head doctor was a dead end – cooperative but no help. Apparently, Vitriol hadn’t confided in her about feeling threatened for years.’
‘Had she been his psychiatrist for twenty-five years?’ said Marsh.
‘Yes, courtesy of the NHS and the tax-payer. If I told you what she charged for a half-hour session you’d probably all resign and retrain. It’s a licence to print money.’
Before anyone could stop him, Grimes said, ‘Years ago we had this kook in the town. We had to bring him in now and again for anti-social behaviour. Liked to get his old chap out in the frozen section of the supermarket. He was definitely odd. We’d hear him having conversations in his cell, but he was in there on his own. We got a trick-cyclist to come in and have a chat with him, but he wasn’t keen. I never forget what he said, ‘As a man with a multiple personality disorder, I’m all the company I need.’
Romney looked at Grimes and said, ‘Can’t you take something for it?’
