The Other Side of Silence

“Entirely. But before you ask I can’t use him again. Unfortunately he died, quite recently.”

“If Louis Legrand had been in possession of the photograph then surely he’d have used it at the time, wouldn’t you say?”

“Yes, that’s true. But I now suspect he might not have used it because he appears in it. Anyway, he was disappointed with his check, it has to be said, and threatened to come back with something ‘more damaging.’ My lawyer wrote him a letter informing Loulou that if he ever returned with more menacing demands for money we would certainly place the matter in the hands of the police. And since Loulou did have a conviction in France, for pimping, which is illegal in this country, he could easily have been deported.”

“So, would you say it’s possible that he decided to use the photograph at one remove and sold it to Harold Hebel?”

“Yes, I would.”

“Do you have a print you can show me?”

Maugham went to his refectory desk and pulled open a drawer. He took out a largish black-and-white photograph and handed it to me, without hesitation or embarrassment, which, for anyone but him, would probably have taken some nerve. But at eighty-two I guess he was through apologizing or feeling ashamed of what he was.

It was a nice swimming pool; at each corner there was an ornamental lead pinecone, with a diving board at one end and, at the other, a marble mask of Neptune as big as an archery target. There was water in the pool, too. Gallons of it. I tried to keep my eyes on the water, but it was difficult. Any self-respecting satrap would have been quite satisfied with the swimming pool’s obvious luxury and, quite probably, the many naked men and boys in various stages of arousal, who were grouped around the mask of Neptune and paying particular priapic attention to the god’s open mouth. As obscene photographs go, it was up there with anything drawn by Aretino at his most provocative. I’d seen worse but not since the days of the Weimar Republic, when Berlin was the world capital of pornography.

“Who’s who?” I asked. “It’s a little difficult to tell anyone apart.”

“That’s Guy there,” said Maugham. “That’s Anthony. And that’s Loulou.”

“Boys will be boys, I suppose.”

“Quite.”

“Is he offering you the negative?”

“Yes.”

“How much does he want for this?”

“Fifty thousand American dollars. In cash. For the negative and the prints.”

“That’s a lot of money for a holiday snap.”

“Which is precisely why I want someone trustworthy to handle the matter for me. Someone who knows what the fuck they’re doing. And who’s not going to get too nervous or overexcited. Someone like you. At least that’s what Hebel says. He tells me you have experience of dealing with blackmailers. Is that true?”

“Yes.”

“In Berlin?”

“Yes.”

“Would you care to tell me about that, perhaps? Just out of interest, I mean. If I’m going to give you five thousand dollars’ commission I think I have a right to know what kind of service I’m buying, don’t you?”

“That’s the thing about blackmail,” I said. “You’ll soon find that you don’t have any rights at all.” I shrugged. “But sure. I’ll tell you. Not that there’s much to tell. This was quite a few years ago, mind, so unlike that photograph-unfortunately-the story’s a little grainy now. It must have been January nineteen thirty-eight. Long after I’d quit the police, and a year or two after I’d left the Adlon. When I was working as a private investigator in Berlin and before-well, that doesn’t matter. But there’s one detail you know already. The identity of the blackmailer. You see, a leopard doesn’t change its spots. The blackmailer was a man called Harold Heinz Hennig, but I fear you know him rather better as Harold Heinz Hebel.”

EIGHT

BERLIN

1938

I’m being blackmailed.”

“I’m very sorry to hear that, sir.”

“My old adjutant told me you used to be a policeman and that now you’re a private detective, and I decided that since we were old comrades that I might come to you for help.”

“I’m very glad you did. It’s been a long time, Captain.”

“Twenty years.”

“You look well, sir.”

“Thanks for saying so, Gunther, but we both know that’s not true.”