but he does not understand that.’
‘Eventually he does, surely?’
‘By then he no longer cares – the therapeutic aspect of the relationship is clear to him.’
‘You blackmail him into co-operating?’
Datt shrugged. ‘I might have done had it ever proved necessary, but it never has. By the time a man has been studied by me and the girls for six months he needs us.’
‘I don’t understand.’
‘You don’t understand,’ said Datt patiently, ‘because you persist in regarding me as some malign monster feeding on the blood of my victims.’ Datt held up his hands. ‘What I did for these men was helpful to them. I worked day and night, endless sessions to help them understand themselves: their motives, their aspirations, their weaknesses and strengths. The girls too were intelligent enough to be helpful, and reassuring. All the people that I have studied become better personalities.’
‘Will become,’ I corrected. ‘That’s the promise you hold out to them.’
‘In some cases, not all.’
‘But you have tried to increase their dependency upon you. You have used your skills to make these people think they need you.’
‘You are splitting hairs. All psychiatrists must do that. That’s what the word “transference” means.’
‘But you have a hold over them. These films and records: they demonstrate the type of power you want.’
‘They demonstrate nothing. The films, etc. are nothing to me. I am a scientist, not a blackmailer. I have merely used the sexual activities of my patients as a short cut to understanding the sort of disorders they are likely to have. A man reveals so much when he is in bed with a woman; it’s this important element of release. It’s common to all the activities of the subject. He finds release in talking to me, which gives him freedom in his sexual appetites. Greater and more varied sexual activity releases in turn a need to talk at greater length.’
‘So he talks to you.’
‘Of course he does. He grows more and more free, and more and more confident.’
‘But you are the only person he can boast to.’
‘Not boast exactly, talk. He wishes to share this new, stronger, better life that he has created.’
‘That you have created for him.’
‘Some subjects have been kind enough to say that they lived at only ten per cent of their potential until they came to my clinic.’ M. Datt smiled complacently. ‘It’s vital and important work showing men the power they have within their own minds if they merely take courage enough to use it.’
‘You sound like one of those small ads from the back pages of skin magazines. The sort that’s sandwiched between acne cream and peeping-tom binoculars.’
‘Honi soit qui mal y pense. I know what I am doing.’
I said, ‘I really believe you do, but I don’t like it.’
‘Mind you,’ he said urgently, ‘don’t think for one moment I’m a Freudian. I’m not. Everyone thinks I’m a Freudian because of this emphasis on sex. I’m not.’
‘You’ll publish your results?’ I asked.
‘The conclusions possibly, but not the case histories.’
‘It’s the case histories that are the important factor,’ I said.
‘To some people,’ said Datt. ‘That’s why I have to guard them so carefully!’
‘Loiseau tried to get them.’
‘But he was a few minutes too late.’ Datt poured himself another small glass of wine, measured its clarity and drank a little. ‘Many men covet my dossiers but I guard them carefully. This whole neighbourhood is under surveillance. I knew about you as soon as you stopped for fuel in the village.’
The old woman knocked discreetly and entered. ‘A car with Paris plates – it sounds like Madame Loiseau – coming through the village.’
Datt nodded. ‘Tell Robert I want the Belgian plates on the ambulance and the documents must be ready. Jean-Paul can help him. No, on second thoughts don’t tell Jean-Paul to help him. I believe they don’t get along too well.’ The old woman said nothing. ‘Yes, well that’s all.’
Datt walked across to the window and as he did so there was the sound of tyres crunching on the gravel.
‘It’s Maria’s car,’ said Datt.
‘And your backyard Mafia didn’t stop it?’
‘They are not there to stop people,’ explained Datt. ‘They are not collecting entrance money, they are there for my protection.’
‘Did Kuang tell you that?’ I said. ‘Perhaps those guards are there to stop you getting out.’
‘Poof,’ said Datt, but I knew I had planted a seed in his mind. ‘I wish she’d brought the boy with her.’
I said, ‘It’s Kuang who’s in charge. He didn’t ask you before agreeing to my bringing Hudson here.’
‘We have our areas of authority,’ said Datt. ‘Everything concerning data of a technical kind – of the kind that Hudson can provide – is Kuang’s province.’ Suddenly he flushed with anger. ‘Why should I explain such things to you?’
‘I thought you were explaining them to yourself,’ I said.
Datt changed the subject abruptly. ‘Do you think Maria told Loiseau where I am?’
‘I’m sure she didn’t,’ I said. ‘She has a lot of explaining to do the next time she sees Loiseau. She has to explain why she warned you about his raid on the clinic.’
‘That’s true,’ said Datt. ‘A clever man, Loiseau. At one time I thought you were his assistant.’
‘And now?’
‘Now I think you are his victim, or soon will be.’
I said nothing. Datt said, ‘Whoever you work for, you run alone. Loiseau has no reason to like you. He’s jealous of your success with Maria – she adores you, of course. Loiseau pretends he’s after me, but you are his real enemy. Loiseau is in trouble with his department, he might have decided that you could be the scapegoat. He visited me a couple of weeks ago, wanted me to sign a document concerning you. A tissue of lies, but cleverly riddled with half-truths that could prove bad for you. It needed only my signature. I refused.’
‘Why didn’t you sign?’
M. Datt sat down opposite me and looked me straight in the eye. ‘Not because I like you particularly. I hardly know you. It was because I had given you that injection when I first suspected that you were an agent provocateur sent by Loiseau. If I treat a person
