Lately, though, there were times when Myatt never got paid, and he had begun to suspect that Drewe was holding out on him. The professor always had an explanation. “Recession, John,” he’d say. “Business is bad. It’s only going to get worse.” Occasionally he’d turn up the next time with a stuffed envelope, and life would be rosy again for a while.
Myatt sat hunched over a second cappuccino. The street outside Christie’s was nearly empty except for a few well-heeled buzzards wandering up toward St. James. The limos were gone. He made a rough calculation: His profits from Drewe’s game—perhaps £100,000 over eight years—amounted to just about what he would have earned if he’d stayed at his part-time teaching job. Drewe had figured out exactly how much Myatt needed to keep himself afloat, and that was exactly what he’d given him.
Meanwhile, Drewe had been raking it in. By now he’d taken half of London out for quail and venison at L’Escargot and Claridge’s, and plied an ever-expanding roster of experts and curators with imported cigars and wines. He was at the top of his game, and his self-confidence seemed never to waver.
Myatt, on the other hand, felt like a petty thief. For most of his life he’d yearned for membership in the society of artists and art lovers, but after tonight’s auction that world seemed as shallow and false as the scam. His skills at the easel had been eclipsed by Drewe’s talent as a provider of fake provenance, and most of his paintings were horrible knockoffs anyway. If he’d signed them himself and rented a showroom, they would have been laughed off the wall. He wondered what kind of life he would be leading five or ten years from now. What would he tell his children? That he was a two-bit criminal who had squandered his talents?
So far he’d managed to lead a comfortably compartmentalized life. He did his job quietly and without bothering anyone. He was a good father, an artist, a sometime musician, an occasionally respectable member of his community. Half the time he sang with the church choir and painted portraits of the vicar. The other half, he forged pictures. The two Myatts coexisted without much fuss, as if one didn’t know that the other existed.
Drewe had at least one Swiss bank account and encouraged Myatt to open one for himself and to deposit £25,000. According to Myatt, Drewe had also suggested that he open additional accounts in Russian banks, which he claimed were the best places to hide money. He’d encouraged Myatt to invest in diamonds, as he himself had, and told his partner that he kept a stash hidden in a pouch behind his lavatory.23
“You can’t go wrong with gems,” he said.
Myatt was grateful for the advice but hadn’t followed it. He wasn’t interested in the high life, and never dreamed of buying a new house or car. All he wanted was to provide for his children. He was earning enough from the fakes, he’d told Drewe, and happy enough to be in business with him. He had never once looked back.
But now he felt a wave of shame—an unfamiliar emotion that had never been part of his repertoire. He paid for the coffee, got into his beat-up old Rover, and drove north.
At home, the children were asleep and a blank canvas was staring at him from the easel. He went to bed and woke the next morning with something akin to a hangover, which he recognized as leftover self-disgust from his night in the doldrums on King Street.
With little enthusiasm he began work on a new Braque. Using various shades of burnt sienna and dark brown, he painted recklessly and without inspiration. By the following day he’d accomplished nothing. In frustration, he dipped his brush into a can of bright red emulsion and slapped it onto the canvas. The red stood out for miles, a little dash of angry Myatt. The piece was dreadful, but he didn’t care. He deserved a kick in the arse. He deserved to get caught. At the same time, he was terrified of getting caught, and he still felt some loyalty to Drewe. He had no idea how to get out of the game.
When he dropped off the Braque at their next meeting, he begged Drewe to rethink the operation. He suggested that they take a ninemonthbreather from the conveyor belt and do things a little differently. Rather than cranking out paintings, he would focus on a single work, a small still life, say, or a Cézanne landscape. He had always worked from secondhand material, and now he wanted to get his hands on an original. He wanted Drewe to bring something genuine into the studio so that he could sit with it and take it in. Then, if the gods were on his side, he would go to work and produce something top-of-the-line, something absolutely right for a change. He would re-create the work faithfully. He would dust off his old art books and find the perfect age-appropriate brushes and paints. Drewe’s job would be to concoct the perfect provenance, a leakproof, rock-solid archival masterpiece.
One last glorious sale and they could both retire.
“Let’s do it properly or not at all,” he told Drewe.
The professor was unmoved. They were on a roll. The ship was on course. Why spoil things?
Myatt confided his fears of ending up in prison.
“Don’t worry,” said Drewe. “If you put a fake work through auction, it’s the auctioneer who takes the blame. Sotheby’s or Christie’s would have to reimburse the buyer. No one gets hurt. We’re free and clear.”
Rubbish, thought Myatt. They would never be safe.
It occurred to him that Drewe was addicted to the con, that every sale was like a junkie’s rush to him. The money wasn’t the object, it was the scam itself. Drewe had begun to believe in his imaginary status as a collector and to speak about the paintings as if they were authentic. Like every bad drug run, this would all come to a dreadful end. The market simply could not absorb the number of fakes they were producing. If they continued as usual, they would almost certainly get pinched.
When Myatt suggested again that they slow things down, Drewe replied that he was under intense pressure from dealers and collectors to come up with more work. Some of Myatt’s paintings had been returned to him, and a few clients were asking for their money back. This was no time to turn tail. If anything, they had to expand the business, not wrap it up. He proposed to add Russian and American artists to their roster, and urged Myatt to come up with one or two good Bar-nett Newmans and a few Frank Stellas from his 1960s period. These were certainly within Myatt’s range, and would be highly marketable.
There was an irritation and impatience in Drewe’s voice that Myatt hadn’t heard for years. In the early Golders Green days, Drewe had had tantrums now and then, but they were short-lived and usually provoked by a losing hand at bridge. Now the bad moods lasted for days. As Drewe obsessed over every bad transaction and cursed the dealers who had crossed him, the color rose to his scarred neck and the cork came off. A rage that had been kept under wraps swept through his system, his whole body shuddered slightly, and his facial muscles contorted. Myatt felt obliged to sit with him and ride out the storm, but the rants were becoming more and more worrisome.
Myatt wondered what had precipitated the change in Drewe. He thought back over the past year or so and recalled the many occasions on which he had witnessed or heard about Drewe’s deteriorating situation at home. Once, when Myatt brought a new painting over to Rotherwick Road, he’d found Goudsmid and Drewe facing off on opposite sides of the living room. Goudsmid was in the middle of a full-blown tirade, screaming that Drewe was a liar, an impotent bastard, and a crook. Drewe stood there with no expression on his face, waited for her to finish, and then hustled the embarrassed Myatt outside. They walked to a local pub and talked until closing time.
Drewe told Myatt that Goudsmid had become dangerously unstable and suffered from a serious mental illness. She was paranoid and had been diagnosed with Munchausen syndrome by proxy. She had declared all-out war on him, and he feared she might harm the children. After one argument, he said, she had thrown boiling water on the family dog. Then she had put the pet goldfish live into the microwave.
For the next few weeks Myatt had received updates on the couple’s deteriorating relationship, until Drewe finally called to say that the relationship was over, that he had left Goudsmid, taken custody of the
children, and moved out to the country.
One night not long after, Drewe and Myatt met for dinner at one of their favorite Italian restaurants in Hampstead. Drewe drank heavily. Afterward they went out to the parking lot to look at a new piece Myatt had brought in. Drewe was beaming, reeking of Beaujolais and puffing on a cigar. Myatt opened the trunk of the Rover and handed him the painting, a Giacometti crayon and pencil drawing of a man standing beside a tree. Drewe held it up to the bright neon lights.
“I don’t think you realize, John, that this is a classic example of the artist’s work,” he said. “It’s powerful, simple, and symbolic. You don’t know how important it is.”
“I know what it is,” Myatt said. “I bloody well painted it.”
Drewe’s jaw clenched. “Don’t ever say that again,” he snarled.
Myatt remembered wondering, in the wake of that incident, whether Drewe was losing touch with reality. He’d called him up the next day and again made the argument for quitting the game, but there was no getting through to him. He’d written Drewe a long and heartfelt farewell letter but hadn’t had the courage to send it. It was tucked away in his briefcase.
Now a cloud hung over their friendship, such as it had been. Whenever they got together, Drewe went on for hours about his problems with Goudsmid and various art dealers, and endlessly repeated his stories about MI5, his weapons training, and his expertise in methods of interrogation, assassination, and political reprisal. Myatt could no longer follow these increasingly obsessive monologues.
One night, as they were walking through the city, Drewe pulled Myatt into an alley, opened his overcoat, and showed him a pair of handguns tucked into leather holsters. He drew one, pointed it directly at Myatt’s face, and smiled, and then laughed. He repacked the weapon and walked on as if nothing had happened.
That was the last straw for Myatt. Drewe was definitely crazy, and it was no longer a question of scaling back the business. Myatt wanted out. There was just one problem. If he quit now, he was sure Drewe would go after him, and maybe even his children. He thought the professor was quite capable of killing him. Drewe, in his paranoia, would build a case against Myatt in his head and then try to eliminate him. The two men had worked together for nearly a decade, and Myatt knew nearly every angle of the con. He knew about the professor’s larcenous visits to the Tate and the V&A and the British Council, and he had met several of Drewe’s runners. He knew too much.
Back in Sugnall, Myatt sat down on the sofa and had a stiff drink. What a bloody great fall from grace, he thought. From the beginning the scam had been a huge and soul-devouring mistake. He had been deceiving himself for years, ignoring the sharp end of what he was doing. He needed to talk to someone, but there was no one he could trust. He contemplated calling the police.
The phone rang. It was Drewe, calling from a service area on the highway.
“I can’t talk on your private line,” he said. “It’s not safe. Go down to the old phone box down the lane and I’ll ring you there.”
Myatt put on his coat and went outside to wait for the call.
“We’re in a jam, John,” Drewe said. He claimed that someone was trying to blackmail him and he’d been forced to take extreme measures. “Incriminating evidence” linked them both to the scam, and he’d had no choice but to break into the blackmailer’s house and “take steps.”
“What steps?” Myatt asked.
“Let’s just say there was a very smoky experience.”
A chill ran through Myatt’s bones.
“You do realize that you’re part of this as well?” Drewe said.
Myatt felt sick. He thought about turning himself in, but who would care for the kids if he went to prison? He wondered whether Drewe was bluffing again in order to keep the paintings coming in. Had there really been a fire? Was this another of Drewe’s extended theatrical pieces?
Myatt had painted more than 240 works for him, and Drewe must still have plenty of them. He didn’t really need Myatt; he could stay in business for years without him. Myatt was expendable. He thought about those guns and the way Drewe had smiled. He felt as if he’d been swept out to sea and had to swim back to shore, somehow keeping his head above water until he could feel the sand beneath his feet. Then he could start again.
Drewe phoned a couple of days later in the dead of night. Myatt shot up in bed. “Don’t call here again,” he shouted. “Just fuck off.”
Drewe was silent for a moment, and then he hung up.
21
THE CHAMELEON
Higgs was sure he was dealing with a con man. Batsheva Goudsmid had given him a list of Drewe’s acquaintances, each of whom had provided a slightly different version of the professor. Some knew him as a physicist and researcher, others as a consultant for the intelligence services. Still others described a man who had spent his time working abroad on behalf of the government in some mysterious capacity. They were all willing to vouch for him, but none of them had anything substantial to contribute to the slim profile the police had assembled.
Higgs knew that people lied all the time, and that fibbing was an integral part of everyday communication. He had seen prevaricators of every sort during his many years on the job. Studies suggesting that people lied on average once or twice a day would not have surprised him.
Drewe, however, was no mere liar. He was a mirage.
Higgs wanted to hear his voice again. He pulled out the audio-tapes of Drewe’s interrogation after the fire and put on his headphones. The voice was as he remembered it, soft, elegant, and assured. Drewe sounded absolutely calm until one of his interrogators interrupted him, and then he sighed theatrically and his tone changed. When he was asked to repeat an answer, he sounded as exasperated as a teacher in a classroom of half-wits. Questioned about his stint in academe, the professor had refused to say where he taught.
Higgs put the headphones away and began calling around to the universities to see if Drewe’s claims stood up. Britain’s universities gave out professorships only to the most distinguished scholars, so Higgs was skeptical. He discovered that there was no record of Drewe’s having taught in Britain or on the Continent, and that while he claimed to have conducted research in Russia, Germany, and France, he had never published a single paper. Higgs doubted Drewe had ties to the intelligence community, as he had claimed; if he did, MI5 would already have warned the detective off.
Rummaging through police databases, Higgs’s investigators were unable to find tax or medical records, a driver’s license or credit history for John Drewe. They learned that he and Goudsmid had opened a joint bank account and cosigned a substantial mortgage for the house on Rotherwick Road, but that the down payment and the risk were apparently all hers. While Higgs could find no evidence that Drewe had earned, saved, or owed any money, the man was clearly doing well for himself, for he had a bodyguard/chauffeur on retainer and a good table at Claridge’s.
Higgs studied the composite of the man Horoko Tominaga had seen shortly before the fire. It bore a slight resemblance to Drewe. When he called the professor to ask a few follow-up questions, Drewe was no longer quite as affable as he had been earlier.
“Back off,” he told the detective.
Drewe knew that Higgs had been asking around about him, and he warned that this fresh round of inquiry verged on harassment. If Higgs did not leave him alone, Drewe would lodge a protest with the head of the Police Complaints Authority. He said he was good friends with the chief and mentioned him by name. Higgs suspected that he was bluffing and immediately rang the PCA to see if anyone had called to ask for the chief’s name. He had guessed correctly: Just a few days earlier an unidentified gentleman had called to ask that very question. Slippery fellow, thought Higgs.
The detective had his own reasons for disliking con men. During his years on the force, he’d faced off against several of them. On one occasion he received a report from a hotel manager on Oxford Street about a suspicious-looking briefcase left in the lobby. Higgs rushed to th
e hotel, opened the case, and discovered a pile of financial statements, photocopied documents that were clearly cut-and-paste jobs, an assortment of IDs, some blank company stationery, and ink and rubber stamps.
As he rummaged through the briefcase, the owner returned, spotted Higgs, and bolted. The detective chased him into the afternoon traffic, dodging buses, climbing over turnstiles and store display cases, until he finally tackled him. During the struggle Higgs took a kick to the side of the head that left him permanently deaf in one ear.
The perp’s rap sheet described a lifelong con artist who had recently taken a job as a night-shift cleaner at a pension fund in order to gather information about its finances. He was about to complete a wire transfer of £750,000 from its account when Higgs caught up with him. Much like Drewe, the perp was a fast talker and a persuasive chameleon.
Higgs’s other close encounter with hucksters was more personal. His mother, a tough Scotswoman who had raised three children during wartime, had been conned repeatedly by phone charmers preying on the elderly. Generally, they would call at suppertime to tell her she had won a prize she could access only by calling a certain telephone number. She would spend hours on the line, running up bills at premium rates chasing dreams.
Higgs had read up on professional scammers and found that criminologists had developed a psychological blueprint of the confidence man based on descriptions provided by their unhappy marks. Most victims recalled the con man’s beautiful delivery, the effect of his purring voice on the semicircular canals of the inner ear, the perfect timber and cadence, the whiff of expertise. The come-on produced a feeling that something unprecedented was on the way, a shift in fortune, a sea change. Experts referred to this phenomenon as the “phantom dream” and considered it the basis of every decent scam. The mark always craved something that was out of reach, and the con man knew how to identify the mark’s particular longing and zero in on it. A good confidence man could pick his mark out of a crowd as easily as a spotted hyena could tag a sick wildebeest. Once the game was up and the embarassed mark realized he’d been had, he would invariably stumble into the police station to describe the rake’s method, his extraordinary lightness of touch, his talent for skating around craters of logic, for touching the victim deep down, in broad daylight, under the glow of his own ineffable charm.
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