The Spy Quartet: An Expensive Place to Die, Spy Story, Yesterday’s Spy, Twinkle Twinkle Little Spy

‘But you don’t inquire into yourself, you inquire into other people.’

He leaned back and smiled. ‘My dear man, the reason I collect information, compile dossiers and films and recordings and probe the personal secrets of a wide range of important men, is twofold. Primarily because important men control the fate of the world and I like to feel that in my small way I influence such men. Secondly, I have devoted my life to the study of mankind. I love people; I have no illusions about them, it’s true, but that makes it much easier to love them. I am ceaselessly amazed and devoted to the strange convoluted workings of their devious minds, their rationalizations and the predictability of their weaknesses and failings. That’s why I became so interested in the sexual aspect of my studies. At one time I thought I understood my friends best when I watched them gambling: their avarice, kindness, and fear were so much in evidence when they gambled. I was a young man at the time. I lived in Hanoi and I saw the same men every day in the same clubs. I liked them enormously. It’s important that you believe that.’ He looked up at me.

I shrugged. ‘I believe it.’

‘I liked them very much and I wished to understand them better. For me, gambling could never hold any fascination: dull, repetitive and trivial. But it did unleash the deepest emotions. I got more from seeing their reactions to the game than from playing. So I began to keep dossiers on all my friends. There was no malign intent; on the contrary, it was expressly in order to understand and like them better that I did it.’

‘And did you like them better?’

‘In some ways. There were disillusions, of course, but a man’s failings are so much more attractive than his successes – any woman will tell you that. Soon it occurred to me that alcohol was providing more information to the dossiers than gambling. Gambling showed me the hostilities and fears, but drink showed me the weaknesses. It was when a man felt sorry for himself that one saw the gaps in the armour. See how a man gets drunk and you will know him – I have told so many young girls that: see your man getting drunk and you will know him. Does he want to pull the blankets over his head or go out into the street and start a riot? Does he want to be caressed or to commit rape? Does he find everything humorous, or threatening? Does he feel the world is secretly mocking him, or does he throw his arms around a stranger’s shoulders and shout that he loves everyone?’

‘Yes. It’s a good indication.’

‘But there were even better ways to reach deep into the subconscious, and now I wanted not only to understand people but also to try planting ideas into their heads. If only I could have a man with the frailty and vulnerability of drunkenness but without the blurriness and loss of memory that drink brought, then I would have a chance of really improving my dossiers. How I envied the women who had access to my friends in their most vulnerable – post-coital triste – condition. Sex, I decided, was the key to man’s drives and post-sex was his most vulnerable state. That’s how my methods evolved.’

I relaxed now that Datt had become totally involved in his story. I suppose he had been sitting out here in this house, inactive and musing about his life and what had led to this moment of supreme power that he was now enjoying so much. He was unstoppable, as so many reserved men are once explanations start burbling out of them.

‘Eight hundred dossiers I have now, and many of them are analyses that a psychiatrist would be proud of.’

‘Are you qualified to practise psychiatry?’ I asked.

‘Is anyone qualified to practise it?’

‘No,’ I said.

‘Precisely,’ said Datt. ‘Well, I am a little better able than most men. I know what can be done, because I have done it. Done it eight hundred times. Without a staff it would never have developed at the same rate. Perhaps the quality would have been higher had I done it all myself, but the girls were a vital part of the operation.’

‘The girls actually compiled the dossiers?’

‘Maria might have been able to if she’d worked with me longer. The girl that died – Annie Couzins – was intelligent enough, but she was not temperamentally suited to the work. At one time I would work only with girls with qualifications in law or engineering or accountancy, but to find girls thus qualified and also sexually alluring is difficult. I wanted girls who would understand. With the more stupid girls I had to use recording machines, but the girls who understood produced the real results.’

‘The girls didn’t hide the fact that they understood?’

‘At first. I thought – as you do now – that men would be afraid and suspicious of a woman who was clever, but they aren’t, you see. On the contrary, men like clever women. Why does a husband complain “my wife doesn’t understand me” when he goes running off with another woman? Why, because what he needs isn’t sex, it’s someone to talk to.’

‘Can’t he talk to the people he works with?’

‘He can, but he’s frightened of them. The people he works with are after his job, on the watch for weakness.’

‘Just as your girls are.’

‘Exactly, 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.’