In Vino Veritas

by Peter Turnbull

  ‘They didn’t count it?’ Vicary gasped.

  Escritt gave Vicary a despairing look. ‘They hadn’t the time nor the manpower to count it,’ he explained. ‘They were criminals but they trusted each other. They had to – no other way.’ Escritt once again glanced to his right at the view from Vicary’s office window. ‘I dare say if one gang cheated there would be some blood spilled but we have heard nothing to indicate that that happened. The gang that did the dirty on the other gang would be named and shamed and no other gang would do business with them, so that knowledge of the consequences for cheating kept both gangs in line.’

  ‘I see.’ Vicary pursed his lips. ‘So I’ll let you know where he lives but you must agree not to move on him until we give the nod. He’s still a suspect in his wife’s murder and that takes precedence over anything the Economic Crime Unit wants him for.’

  ‘Agreed.’ Escritt nodded. ‘Fully understood and agreed.’

  ‘And a small favour,’ Vicary asked, ‘if it’s possible?’

  ‘Just ask.’ Escritt smiled. ‘In return for finding McLaverty, we’ll be only too pleased to help the Murder and Serious Crime Squad in any way we can.’

  ‘The felon you mentioned earlier, the protected person who is going to give evidence against Woodhuyse, aka McLaverty,’ Vicary asked. ‘I’d like him to be interviewed by myself or my officers. Anything he can tell us about McLaverty/Woodhuyse might be very useful. In fact, it will be most useful.’

  ‘We can arrange that.’ Escritt stood. ‘I’ll get right on it. I’ll have him brought down to Scotland Yard as soon as I can.’

  ‘Ideal.’ Vicary also stood and he and Escritt shook hands firmly. ‘That would be ideal.’

  ‘No … no, I assure you it’s not a problem. Not a problem at all. I can talk to you and I will do so with pleasure.’ Dafne Zipes revealed herself to be a tall, slender woman with warm, kindly grey eyes, so thought Penny Yewdall, who wore her long silver hair tied in a neat bun at the back of her head. Dafne Zipes had a soft, mellifluous voice with a distinct European accent and a gentle smile, causing Yewdall to further think that the woman could fairly be described as ‘motherly’. Dafne Zipes lived in a cluttered but also neatly kept semi-detached house in Ribbleside Avenue in Northolt. She kept the curtains of her living room partially closed, creating a dimly lit, near mystical atmosphere in her home, so Ainsclough found as he sat next to Penny Yewdall on the settee. An atmosphere that was deepened by the heavy, dark stained furniture, the dark carpet and a large aspidistra plant which grew in a large brass pot and which stood sentinel-like in the corner of the room opposite the door. Dafne Zipes was barefoot and wore a long dress in dark blue which further enhanced the mystical atmosphere of her room, yet both officers had to concede that said mysticism was not at all threatening and had a rather profound sense of peace and tranquillity and safety about it. It had a certain controlled depth, and neither Yewdall nor Ainsclough found the room depressing or overbearing. The interior of the house had come as a great surprise, if not a shock to the officers, because Ribbleside Avenue was, they had discovered, a new-build development of detached and semi-detached properties, and also of short terraces, but all houses were built with a light-coloured brick, with ‘postage stamp’ front gardens and with short driveways leading to small garages designed for equally small cars. It was as if, both officers thought, Dafne Zipes’s room was in the wrong house. It should, they both felt, be a room in a large, ivy-covered house built in Victorian times, which stood on the edge of a remote village where strangers are viewed with suspicion and hostility. ‘I work independently and don’t have to consult anymore,’ she explained. ‘But even if I worked for the National Health Service I would still be more than happy to talk to you if the person in question is deceased, and if I can be of assistance to the police with their inquiries.’ She paused. ‘So, yes, yes, I do remember Victoria Keynes; in fact, I remember her very well indeed. Some clients you remember more than you remember others, and Victoria was one of the well-remembered ones. She was, as I recall, a deeply troubled young woman.’

  ‘What can you tell us about her?’ Penny Yewdall asked as she saw Tom Ainsclough reach for his notebook.

  ‘Well … I suppose that I had better start at the beginning.’ Dafne Zipes paused again as if collecting her thoughts. ‘I remember that Victoria contacted me on the advice of a friend of hers who I was also seeing, one Sylvia Hubbard, who I believe you have already met?’

  ‘Yes,’ Yewdall replied, ‘we have met her. It was she who suggested we contact you.’

  ‘So she told me when she made the courtesy call that I might be contacted by the police on her suggestion. She then told me what it was about and I then heard the sad news about Victoria. I was very saddened. Murdered and her body hidden for ten years. That is not good, not good at all.’ Again Dafne Zipes paused before continuing. ‘So it was the case that Victoria self-referred and after the initial chat I decided to offer her ten sessions when I had space available. There was, I recall, something like a six-month time gap between the initial self-referral and the beginning of our weekly sessions. These things take time, you see.’

  ‘So we are given to understand.’ Yewdall inclined her head to one side.

  ‘Yes, a psychologist’s wheels are like the wheels of God. They grind slow but they grind exceeding small.’ Dafne Zipes smiled. ‘But I dare say it’s less time than you’d have to wait for a hip replacement operation, or an operation to remove cataracts,’ she added defensively. ‘Often the condition is chronic, not acute; the damage wasn’t done overnight and it won’t be repaired overnight, and so clients can afford to wait for that amount of time before starting the therapy sessions. And the reason why we offer a limited number of sessions is that it forces the client to focus and work on the issue in question. If the client thinks the sessions are endless they will feel that they are not under time pressure and they won’t discuss anything. I often find that it’s at about the third or fourth session that the patient discloses a whole minefield of issues.’

  ‘I see,’ Yewdall replied. ‘How interesting.’

  ‘So,’ Dafne Zipes continued, ‘Victoria arrived for her first appointment. I remember she was neatly and conservatively dressed. She arrived on time, which was impressive because it was quite a trek from her house in St John’s Wood out here to Northolt. She travelled by Tube – just one change at Oxford Street, but it’s still a long journey – seventeen stations all told, but most of the journey was above ground so she had something to look at other than her fellow passengers. So we sat down in the consulting room, which is the room above this room, intended as a bedroom but it has two armchairs, a table by the client’s chair which has tissues on it because often clients get distressed … painted in light coloured, pastel shades. We sat down and it was clear that she wanted to work hard. She had referred herself because her marriage was under great strain and she felt that it was failing. She and her husband had not been married very long and she told me that the union was already in trouble, and that she was blaming herself for the trouble because she could not bear to let her husband touch her. She described herself as having everything any woman could want, particularly any young woman. She had a beautiful home and a wealthy and successful husband who worked in the City of London. She told me that he worked in the world of finance but did not elaborate. She had a little experience of working in a bank before she married but her husband’s wheelings and dealings in the world of international finance were beyond her, and so she could not share in his world of work. But the real problem, she told me, was that she would freeze each time her husband tried to touch her. I also felt that it was very significant that she referred herself under her maiden name of Keynes, rather than her married name of Woodhuyse. It was as if she was not accepting her marriage, as if she was not committed to it, although I did not comment about it to her.’

  ‘Really?’ Yewdall commented. ‘That is quite interesting. A recently married woman using her maiden name �
�� that does not sound healthy.’

  ‘It struck me as being very unhealthy,’ Dafne Zipes replied. ‘But the freezing when her husband touches her … that is a classic symptom,’ Dafne Zipes continued. ‘And because of that attitude she was sending, she was driving her husband away from her and into the arms of other women. So … I began to probe and she told me that she had vivid recollections of her childhood up to the age of puberty, and then there was a huge time gap when she recalls only a few isolated incidents. In her early teen years … say early to mid-teens, and mostly at school, with some other none-home memories but nothing of her home life. Victoria seemed to have kept her head above water at school, but she told me that she had not done as well as her potential suggested she might. She told me that her teachers had told her parents that she could “go right to the top, but for some reason she was not willing to work”. And being a chronic underachiever at school was another symptom, as was the fact that she was a chronic truant … not engaging and running away.’

  ‘Oh …’ Penny Yewdall groaned. ‘You know, Miss Zipes, I think I know where you are going with this.’

  ‘Yes.’ Dafne Zipes smiled. ‘I thought you might – I can see a certain look in your eyes. Have you worked in some aspect of the child protection service?’

  ‘Yes.’ Penny Yewdall nodded slightly. ‘I did two or three years in the Female and Child Abuse Unit before I transferred to the Murder and Serious Crime Unit.’

  ‘So,’ Tom Ainsclough asked, ‘where is it that you are going?’

  ‘She was sexually abused by her father,’ Penny Yewdall suggested. ‘Is that where we are going?’

  ‘Yes,’ Dafne Zipes replied solemnly, ‘by her father or by some other significant adult in her life who betrayed her trust in him … but yes, that is indeed where we are going. It was, it seemed, so Victoria disclosed, the classic “Lolita Syndrome”. Whereas paedophiles are attracted to very young pre-pubescent children, those men with the “Lolita Syndrome” are attracted to immediate post-pubescent girls of, shall we say, twelve to sixteen years. Such men find girls of that age nearly impossible to resist. They are powerfully drawn to such girls. That disclosure of Victoria’s came about after a few sessions of gentle enquiring, and I used a technique which I usually only use with children when I work with the police and the social services which is to use my animals … by which I mean my farmyard.’

  ‘Your farmyard?’ Yewdall smiled.

  ‘Yes.’ Dafne Zipes also smiled as she replied, ‘I have a collection of toy animals, a few pigs, a few horses, a few cows … four sheep, all largish animals … no ducks or chickens or geese … and we sit down on the floor and play with them, just helping the cow across the field to get a drink from the stream, to get the children familiar with the animals, and then I sit back and watch them play. This is with children, remember.’

  ‘Yes. Understood.’ Tom Ainsclough nodded.

  ‘So it is often, very often the case that if children are being sexually abused, they will tend to manipulate the animals into performing overtly sexual acts, mating with each other, not as animals would and which the child might have witnessed, but face-to-face mating as humans would, in the missionary position, and which the child would not have seen. The sessions are discreetly filmed and if that happens, if the children do that, we have some idea about what is happening in the home and we have evidence on film which the police can use in any subsequent court proceedings.’

  ‘I see.’ Penny Yewdall spoke softly. ‘How interesting. Do you ever use hypnosis on your clients?’

  ‘No. Never,’ Dafne Zipes responded adamantly. ‘Some psychologists do but I don’t. Hypnosis can be dangerous; it can be very damaging and leave people worse off than they were before they started therapy. You can probe for repressed memories; people describe it as being like remembering a dream. Initially they do not think that they are recovering a memory of an actual event, but the memory is recovered in small, isolated episodes, and not in the correct chronological sequence. I once had a male client, a man in his mid- or even late-forties who told me that he had once recovered a memory of being made to fight for his life in a pub in a foreign country where they would not break up fights or call the police as they would in the UK. He told me that he was permitted to choose his opponent but the fight had to go to the death.’

  ‘Blimey,’ Ainsclough gasped, ‘that is heavy. Which country was that?’

  ‘Brazil, I think my client said. Definitely a Latin American country,’ Dafne Zipes replied. ‘But the loser’s body was to be bundled into a car and driven out of the built-up area to a bridge which spanned a ravine in the jungle and tipped into the ravine. If he had lost the fight my client’s body would never have been found and his family would be left fretting and wondering what had happened to him.’

  ‘That experience will be difficult to live with,’ Yewdall commented.

  ‘Yes … it was … I dare say it still is. My client said he couldn’t believe how naïve he was, walking into a bar as though he was walking into an English pub for a quiet drink one evening and suddenly finding himself surrounded by desperados who referred to him as a “Blanco” and made him choose one of them to fight to the death. He said it felt like being a sheep amid a pack of hungry wolves. I don’t know the details of the fight … how the death was occasioned or whether weapons were used – my client didn’t say. All he did say was “like the battle of Waterloo, it was a damn close run thing”.’ Dafne Zipes raised her eyebrows. ‘But I mention this because my client repressed the memory. For fifteen full years he had no memory of it; it was his coping mechanism, which is quite normal, and then it emerged piecemeal, helped with alcohol. It took him four or five days to recover the full memory and to put the episodes in the correct chronological order, and a few more days to accept it had happened and that he was not remembering a dream he had once had. The memory will haunt him for the rest of his life and could possibly remain with him throughout the hereafter.’

  ‘The hereafter?’ Yewdall allowed a note of surprise to enter her voice.

  ‘Well, who knows?’ Dafne Zipes replied. ‘I personally believe in the continuation of consciousness after mortal death, and if memories and regret and guilt are part of your consciousness, who is to say that we will not be spending eternity beating ourselves up for the stupid things we did and said during this lifetime, particularly in our youth?’

  ‘I confess I have never thought of it like that.’ Yewdall sighed. ‘Now I am worried.’

  ‘Me as well,’ Ainsclough added. ‘That thought has put a damper on my day.’

  ‘Well, it is something I ponder from time to time.’ Dafne Zipes seemed to the officers to blend more deeply into the gloom of her room. ‘So, to continue with the story of Victoria Keynes … I experimented with the farm animals and I said, “Look, you be the girl and I’ll be your mummy and we’ll play together.” She was hesitant at first but then slipped into the role of the young girl quite easily and we played for a while and then she picked up two of the cows and moved them in a manner which simulated the usual human face-to-face sex act. Then she dropped the two animals and said, “Why did I do that?”’ Dafne Zipes paused. ‘So then I asked her to tell me … one woman to another, about the first man she slept with. She said she could not remember.’

  ‘But we all remember our first time,’ Yewdall protested. ‘It’s one of life’s milestones.’

  ‘That is in fact not the case,’ Dafne Zipes insisted. ‘You take it from me; it’s not the case at all. If a young girl’s first sexual experience was surrounded by trauma she may bury all memory of it. It is a well-documented phenomenon. Victoria went on to tell me she had memories of being sexually active from her early twenties onwards, although she knew she had had sexual experiences before then. She knew that men or a man had “known” her in the biblical sense, but not who or when or for how often and for what time period.’

  ‘How awful,’ Yewdall gasped.

  ‘Yes … not a pleasant experience, but
then I suggested something very controversial, remembering my client who had unlocked the memory of being made to fight for his life in a Latin American bar by his drinking of alcohol. I suggested that Victoria might make use of alcohol.’

  ‘Controversial, as you say,’ Ainsclough sighed disapprovingly.

  ‘Oh, I know, I know the issues … and Victoria didn’t drink. She was teetotal. She had drunk in the past so I was not introducing her to alcohol so much as re-introducing it into her life. She had already developed a resistance to it. Introducing her to alcohol after a lifelong abstinence could have turned her into an alcoholic, and I was aware of that.’

  ‘Yes …’ Ainsclough sighed once again.

  ‘So,’ Zipes continued, ‘I was careful to ascertain that she had taken alcohol before and then I suggested that she buy a bottle of wine and drink it one evening when she was by herself in the house, just one glass at a time. I knew it was a gamble.’

  ‘A gamble, as you say,’ Yewdall said softly.

  ‘Yes, as I have just said to you, I was wholly aware of the issues,’ Dafne Zipes continued. ‘But you see, alcohol is a disinhibitor. As we grow and are socialized we develop checks and balances which control our behaviour. We learn what is and what is not socially acceptable conduct and said checks and balances are known as inhibitors – they are a little like reins on a horse. Alcohol will relax those inhibitors, hence the disorderly behaviour in drunks.’

  ‘Yes,’ Ainsclough replied, ‘so I believe.’

  ‘Which goes a long way to explaining why serial killers are invariably teetotal,’ Dafne Zipes explained. ‘They are afraid of the concept of “in vino veritas”.’

  ‘“In wine there is truth”,’ Yewdall offered.

  ‘Yes,’ Dafne Zipes replied gently. ‘Yes, precisely. They are frightened that alcohol will make them run off at the mouth and they’ll let a terrible secret slip out.’