Joint Enterprise (The Romney and Marsh Files Book 3) (27 page)

‘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 wh
en 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.’

‘An
d 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 ther
e. ‘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 s
ergeant 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 thinking 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 amus
ement. ‘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 c
hat 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?’

Marsh said, ‘If she had been his psychiatrist for that long then presumably he told her just about everything that went on in his life.’

‘No,’ said Romney. ‘She didn’t have a clue about his porn-site.’

‘Right,’ said Marsh, dragging out the word, obviously still on a particular train of thought and not so easily derailed. ‘But I’m thinking more of his anxieties and concerns than his creative leanings. That’s what you see a psychiatrist for after all, isn’t it? To talk about your fears and problems. Who goes to a psychiatrist to talk about how great their life is?’

‘If the tax-payer
is footing the bill, why not? Where are you going with this?’ said Romney.

‘Well, I would expect that if he had been feeling threatened, he’d have spoken to her about it. So, as he hadn’t said anything
, he hadn’t felt threatened.’

‘That’s brill
iant, Sarge,’ said Grimes.

‘So, because he hadn’t spoken to her about feeling threatened because he hadn’t been threatened then it lends weight to the idea that whoever attacked and killed him hadn’t been intent on it for long.’

‘Eh?’ said Grimes. ‘I’m confused.’

‘I see what you’re saying,’ said Spicer. ‘It makes sense providing that he would have told her for sure if he’d been threatened.’

‘I got the impression he would have,’ said Romney. ‘So it’s looking more like an attack inspired by something recent and carried out by a determined killer. I like it. It’s something. When I get back from the radio station, we’ll start on coordinating Edy’s movements over his last days. Thank you. How did it go up at the castle?’ He was looking at Marsh, not Grimes.

‘First off, when I spoke with Crawford
, the film archivist, Ramsden, was in the marquee. I didn’t have to make sure he overheard our conversation. He was obviously intent on catching everything. I told Crawford we had traced the Animal Rights Enforcers and had carried out a search of the premises from which they operated out of. He listened, but I got the distinct impression he knew more than I did. I told him we’d not recovered the film. I asked him straight out if he’d heard anything or received a ransom demand for the return of the film. I think he might have lied to me then. He said he hadn’t.’

‘What makes you think he was lying?’

‘Because he wasn’t his usual forceful, blustering self. He didn’t bemoan our lack of progress or threaten to call his uncle, or complain about our incompetence. He just accepted what I said a little too philosophically and a little too easily.’

‘Interesting, but it doesn’t necessarily mean he knows any more than we do. We still have to be seen to be pursuing our enquiries, however limited they might be. We need to find out ourselves who raided that farmhouse.’ He looked towards Grimes. ‘Did you speak to your old mate Wilkie?’

‘I told you, gov, he’s not my mate,’ replied Grimes with a wounded expression. ‘I called on his office on the site, but that bloke Gerry told me he wasn’t there and he hadn’t seen him all day.’

‘Great
so you had a wasted morning then?’

‘I wouldn’t say that, gov. They’ve got very good caterers up there. Awesome breakfasts. Eat as much as you like.’

‘I haven’t finished,’ said Marsh. ‘I managed to speak to Ramsden alone.’

‘Go on.’ said Romney
.

‘He’s still wearing a bandage around his head. I asked him how his wound was. He said it was OK. Healing nicely. I told him I wanted to see it. He said that wasn’t possible. I told him he could show it to me there and then, or I was going to have him come down the station and see our doctor.’

‘Did you, now?’ said Romney, openly appreciating her style. ‘And what did he say to that?’

‘He didn’t have to say anything. I thought he was going to have a panic attack in front of me. Started hyperventilating and everything. When he’d got control of himself he begged me not to say anything. Said it would cost him his job and he’d probably be black-listed in the industry for his part in what had ha
ppened. You were right, sir. He’s an animal rights sympathiser. And guess who his sister is?’

‘Oh no.
Jane Barnes.’

‘Go
t it in one. It was a family affair. Quite clever when you think about it.’

‘In theory, perhaps. Doesn’t look too clever now. It hasn’t turned out particularly well for them has it? So what were they intending to do with the film?’

‘He said they wanted to draw attention to how Crawford’s film could prove subsequently detrimental to animal welfare through the publicity generated by the sabotaging of the project.’

‘If he was so against it, what was he doing working on it?’

‘I asked him that. He said work was difficult to find at the moment. Apparently, it’s a lean time for the independent film-making industry. And he said that from the inside he thought that he could do some good for his furry friends.’

‘Hypocrite. They all sound like a bunch of fuck-ups to me,’ said Romney in a flash of genuine anger. ‘I’ve a good mind to drag him and his sister in for wasting police time and to hell with the consequences.’

‘With respect, sir, I don’t think that would be in our best interests. I made Ramsden understand I expect his help and the passing on of information he might become aware of regarding anything that might be relevant to our investigation.’

‘You think that he will?’

‘Oh yes. It was actually his suggestion. Don’t forget that the ARE have had time to wonder what whoever took the film from them wants it for and they’ve arrived at the same conclusion we have: if it wasn’t someone operating with Crawford’s connivance – and clearly it wasn’t because he hasn’t got it – then it must be someone who intends to benefit in some way from temporary ownership. And that has to be financially. There isn’t anything else. And his sister was assaulted after all. He might hear something. Better to have someone on the inside than just inside, if you know what I mean?’