Drewe headed straight for the O’Hana exhibition catalog and opened it to the Standing Nude. Bartos was thrilled.
“There it is,” he said. “Wonderful!”
Drewe opened another large black leather-bound volume, this one containing catalogs from the Hanover Gallery, and flipped to another picture of the nude. He also showed Bartos original documents that appeared to confirm the work’s authenticity.
Bartos was beside himself. How could anyone have questioned the painting? He told Drewe about the work’s long journey and the many obstacles that had been placed in its path.
“Mary Lisa Palmer wasted a lot of my time for nothing,” he said.
“The whole thing’s her fault. She doesn’t know what she’s talking about,” said Drewe, adding that Palmer was under pressure to keep the association alive. “She’s no scholar, and she has a terrible reputation.”
In their excitement, the three men were talking loudly, and one of the staffers came over and asked them to keep their voices down. They went outside, and Drewe presented Bartos with the official report from Art Research, along with an invoice for £1,140.
For all that he was overjoyed by the results, Bartos considered this an excessive sum.
“It’s the standard hourly fee,” Drewe said politely.
The report included several provenance documents, but Bartos was surprised to see that some of the research concerned another, unrelated Giacometti. Why should he have to pay for that? He offered Drewe £400, which Drewe promptly accepted. They walked to an ATM, and once Bartos handed the cash over, Drewe signed the invoice and left.
Bartos felt like celebrating. He was staying with an old friend in London, an investment banker with a good art collection, so he stopped at a pay phone and invited him out to dinner. The banker told him that someone named Jonathan Searle had called from Scotland Yard asking to speak to Bartos, and that he better get back to him right away.
Two hours later Bartos was sitting at the Yard with Searle and Volpe. The detectives didn’t pull any punches. Why was Bartos looking at forged provenances? “We know the painting’s a fake, and you know it’s a fake,” Volpe said. “And we know you’ve been trying to get it authenticated by Palmer.”
“What are you talking about?” Bartos shouted. “I’ve spent a lot of money on this painting. I’m out thousands of dollars, and I can’t sell the damn thing because of this woman. I came here to get to the bottom of it.”
Bartos pulled a stack of notes, receipts, and faxes out of his briefcase, along with the original invoice from Sheila Maskell, the runner who had sold him the work. The two cops glanced through the material and realized that Bartos had been duped like all the others.
Searle walked him through the evidence and showed him the catalog Wendy Fish had found. “This is the original O’Hana catalog, Armand,” he said. “Yours is a forgery.” He assured Bartos that if he cooperated and agreed to testify in court, they could put Drewe away. Bartos might even get his money back.
The dealer was shattered. He had spent nearly a year trying to defend the work’s authenticity. While he still considered it the best Giacometti painting he’d ever seen—forgery or not—he had to face facts.
He had been scammed.
Searle and Volpe now had a strong case against Drewe. Searle was pretty sure that the professor had figured out from Goudsmid that he was a suspect. He was probably hiding or destroying evidence right now. It was possible, though, that in his arrogance he might save everything, believing he could talk his way out of it. He might even relish the challenge. In any case, it was time to “spin” Drewe’s home. If there was anyone who could shake him up, it was Miki Volpe.
32
DREWE DESCENDING
They came for Drewe early the next morning. The long-awaited bust was less than optimal for Volpe: up at 5:00 A.M. after a late night, then the drive to the train station for a somnambular trip into the city to meet up at 6:00 on the dot with his sleep-deprived team, and finally, crammed into the Zed car with a single cup of hot tea in his gut, the run past the Hampstead Heath windmill to Drewe’s doorstep in Reigate, burial place of Samuel Palmer, a visionary painter whose style had been crudely mimicked in the 1970s by the avid forger Tom Keating. For insurance, Searle and the rest of the team would be making a simultaneous surprise visit to the home of Drewe’s mother and stepfather in Burgess Hill.
A little after 7:00 A.M. on Wednesday, April 3, 1996, Volpe, Dick Ellis, and four other plainclothes officers pulled into the driveway of Drewe’s suburban nook on Washington Close. It was common knowledge at the Yard that con men could turn nasty when they were cornered, so Volpe and Ellis had brought along reinforcements. While two of the officers rushed to secure the rear of the house, the others banged on the front door until Drewe emerged, unfazed, to ask what all the fuss was about.
Volpe said he had a warrant to search the house for forged paintings and provenances, and the officers marched into the living room. His wife, Helen Sussman, insulted the detectives and made it clear she thought the idea Drewe might be involved in a serious criminal enterprise was ludicrous. Drewe asked Volpe, who was clearly in charge, if he and Sussman could go upstairs and get dressed. Volpe kept an eye on the professor as he put on a good gray suit, and then they went back down to the kitchen, where Sussman sat out the rest of the search.
“I want you to watch very carefully while we search your premises,” Volpe said with uncharacteristic gravity, well aware of Drewe’s high-end cognitive abilities to read a personal weakness or lack of resolve. “If anything is found which may be evidence, it will be seized. Anything you say may be given in evidence.”
The team went through cabinets and drawers and coat pockets, bagging and tagging the contents. Worried that Drewe might accuse them of planting evidence, they asked again that he pay particular attention as they combed the house.
Everywhere they looked there were documents and photographs, paintings and catalog mock-ups. Tucked in the top left-hand pocket of a blue suit hanging in the cloakroom was a passport in the name of John Cockett. In a kitchen drawer, inside a plastic folder, they discovered a tight little bundle of letters and negatives. Drewe said they had to do with a Giacometti painting he had handled in his capacity as an agent for fine art.
“What’s this?” asked Ellis, pulling from the same drawer a blue folder marked “Stuart” and containing material on a 1939 relief by Ben Nicholson. Drewe explained that Stuart Berkeley was one of his many associates.
Volpe and Ellis sifted through a stack of material on the dining room table, jotting a description of each document in a notebook, and popping the exhibit into an evidence bag. Soon they had accumulated hundreds of items. Volpe slipped through photographs of paintings and sculptures by Segal, Ernst, Kandinsky, and Epstein, stopping at a picture of Giacometti’s Standing Nude, 1955, which he had seen the day before when he and Searle were interviewing Armand Bartos.
“What’s this, then?” he said.
Drewe explained that several years earlier he had acted as an agent for the painting. He showed Volpe a stack of agreements drawn up between himself and his associates, who included Sheila Maskell, Clive Belman, and Daniel Stoakes. Stoakes, he said, was a well-known collector of Ben Nicholson’s work and happened to be the stepson of Tewfik Pasha, the onetime deputy of the kleptomaniacal King Farouk of Egypt, an enthusiastic collector of Fabergé eggs and aspirin bottles, and the owner of the legendary 1933 Double Eagle $20 gold coin, which was now worth more than $7 million. Raymond Dunne, also mentioned in the documents, was a trusted partner in Drewe’s own Airtech Systems, which developed and marketed remote-piloted vehicle technology for the aviation industry.
“Robot planes,” he said to the detectives’ puzzled looks.
He had a long-winded answer for every question and never seemed to falter or contradict himself. Liars of this caliber had amazing memories, Volpe reminded himself, and this was a particularly impressive performance.
As one of the office
rs recorded the exact time of each question and response, Drewe provided a detailed account of himself as a man with broadly varied interests, several interlocking businesses, and a dozen close associates.
At 7:40 A.M., he said he was an agent for the works of Alberto Giacometti.
At 8:05, he was an art researcher specializing in British watercolors.
At 8:15, he was a historian working on a groundbreaking study of artworks lost during World War II.
At 8:33, he was an unofficial diplomatic go-between in the process of organizing reciprocal postwar reparations between Germany and Russia through his contacts with the German Ministry of Finance.
At 8:40, queried about a group of photographs of looted paintings by the German surrealist Max Ernst, he was an entrepreneur developing a computerized art database that could link lost paintings to their owners.
At 9:21, he was the head of Norseland Research, a British partnership that marketed revolutionary archival methods.
At 10:20, he put in a call to his mother.
Volpe sent his men upstairs to search further. In a study they found a box containing a craft knife, surgical blades, a pair of tweezers, and a set of Sotheby’s catalogs from the 1970s, with several illustrations removed and apparently replaced. On the floor was a clear plastic V&A tote bag, and in it was a British Rail ticket to London that had been punched the day before, when Drewe met Bartos at the V&A. In addition, there was a catalog from the Hanover Gallery with stitching trailing from its spine, probably because it was an original catalog that had been ripped out of a bound V&A volume. Volpe felt a small puff of satisfaction: This was physical evidence linking Drewe directly to a theft. When he asked Drewe why the catalog was in his possession, Drewe said he’d bought it at a secondhand bookshop and had the receipt to prove it.
Volpe continued his search. In another plastic bag, he found rubber stamps inscribed “Tate Gallery,” “V&A,” “St. Philip’s Priory,” and “St. Mary’s Priory.” In a pile of old correspondence, he found a 1957 invitation to an exhibition at the ICA gallery, as well as letters from ICA stalwarts Roland Penrose and Lawrence Alloway. Drewe claimed that Alloway had given him the material when he was embarking on a history of the ICA around 1987. In a closet under the stairway, Ellis found cut-and-paste affidavits from solicitors, documents relating to the ownership of several paintings, and others that appeared to confirm Drewe’s academic credentials.
Drewe was the quintessential pack rat; it seemed he had never thrown anything away. His house was a trove of irreconcilable odds and ends: a blue folder labeled “The Internal Geometry of Elementary Particles”; a box of letterhead from the Federal Republic of Germany, and another from the Vindesine Company, supposedly a manufacturer of anticancer drugs; copies of letters Drewe had written to members of Parliament regarding changes in Britain’s bird population and its ecology; a flyer from the Zionist Foundation of Great Britain and Ireland; and a newspaper article about a recent Hampstead fire in which a young Hungarian student had died. Volpe and Ellis exchanged glances. They were aware of the fire and thought it strange that Drewe would have the article in his house. Drewe calmly told the detectives that he had the article because Goudsmid had tried to embarrass him with it: She’d sent copies to the wedding guests before his marriage to Dr. Sussman implying that he was responsible for the fire and the subsequent death.
By noon Volpe felt he had enough evidence to charge Drewe with possession of stolen items linking him to a broadscale con. While the search continued, he formally arrested the professor on suspicion of theft and conspiracy to defraud dealers and auction houses. “You do not have to say anything but it may harm defense if you do not mention when questioned something which you later rely on in court,” he informed Drewe.
“The allegations are provably absurd,” Drewe said, insisting that the material had been obtained legitimately for purposes of research into the ICA.
Volpe said nothing.
As Drewe was explaining that his only contact with the auction houses had been as an agent or middleman for collectors and dealers, he grimaced and put his hands to his temples. He told the cops he was “suffering from either an acoustic migraine or Ménière’s disease,” a disorder of the inner ear that can produce vertigo and a roaring sound in the ear. He said the condition had been diagnosed at Gatwick Park Hospital, and that the stress he was experiencing was likely to bring on “bouts of nausea and total collapse.”
Moments later, Drewe requested a glass of water.
“How are you feeling at the moment?” Volpe asked him, suspecting a ruse.
“I’m feeling fine, thank you very much,” said Drewe.
Volpe advised him that he could call his lawyer.
“I’ve got nothing to hide,” Drewe said. “Carry on.”
Seven hours after they began their search, the cops took a break. The professor made himself a ham sandwich, and Volpe ran out to the corner shop for bacon-and-egg sandwiches for the others. While they were eating, Drewe received a call from his lawyer. Volpe overheard the conversation.
There was no room for the smallest procedural error, and Volpe was determined to take every precaution. “I heard you tell your solicitor that you’re not feeling very well, and we’re trying to obtain the services of a police surgeon,” he told Drewe.
“I don’t want to call the police surgeon,” Drewe said. “I feel able to carry on.”
Volpe called the surgeon anyway. He suspected that Drewe might try to use an illness, real or imagined, to trip the investigators up. When the surgeon arrived two hours later, Volpe temporarily stopped the search while Drewe was examined. The doctor declared Drewe “fit to be detained.”
Volpe walked over to Drewe. “Time to go,” he said. He put on his coat and watched the detectives file out the door carrying cardboard boxes filled with financial papers, documents, photographs, floppy disks, three typewriters, and a computer. An officer led Drewe to one of the cars parked outside, and they set off toward the Reigate police station.
Volpe stayed behind for a last look around. As he was preparing to go, he noticed a colorful Juan Gris hanging in the living room above the fireplace. He admired it for a moment, then looked at his watch and recorded the time in his notebook: 7:03 P.M. He took the painting off the wall, put it under his arm, and closed the door behind him.
At the station Volpe placed Drewe in a “custody suite” that was monitored by a closed-circuit camera. He and Ellis were afraid Drewe would allege that he’d been roughed up, which would certainly win him a mistrial. After a short conference, the detectives agreed to call it a night. It would take weeks to prepare a formal interrogation from such an abundance of material. They released Drewe on bail and ordered him to return in five weeks, on May 14.
The professor was on his best behavior now. His suit didn’t have a single wrinkle, his tie was straight, and he seemed as refreshed as if he’d just swum a dozen laps and downed a perfect martini. He turned to his interrogators.
“It’s been such a long day for us all,” he said cheerfully. “Why don’t we all go down to the pub and have a drink?”
Volpe and Ellis declined the invitation.
Over the next several weeks the detectives pulled together the remaining strands of the investigation. In quick succession, they raided the homes of the runners.
At 6:00 A.M. on a June morning they knocked on Clive Belman’s door at 45 Rotherwick Road. They flashed a search warrant and told him they were looking for forgeries and any correspondence he might have had with John Drewe.
Belman seemed shocked and immediately agreed to cooperate. His wife and his two children, both in their early teens, sat half asleep in their pajamas as the police searched the house, bagging Sotheby’s catalogs, checkbooks, and a black briefcase containing a letter to the dealer David Stern and provenance for a Giacometti Standing Nude.
“Mr. Belman,” Searle said, “I’m arresting you on suspicion of conspiracy to defraud with paintings and provenances.” As his family watc
hed Belman was placed in the back of a squad car and driven the few blocks to the Golders Green station.
When police visited the home of Stuart Berkeley, they found several box files relating to the case. Berkeley too quickly agreed to cooperate.
Their next stop was the Tate. The librarian had called to say that an art researcher named Maxine Levy had come in looking for material on Ben Nicholson. Volpe and Searle arrived to find that Levy, whom they knew as the runner who sold the fake Nicholson “1938” watercolor to the dealer Gimpel, had been at the library that morning but had slipped out for lunch. They hid behind a bookcase and waited for her. Then they watched as the diminutive young woman returned and sat down at a table in the middle of the reading room beneath the rotunda. As she was leafing through Nicholson catalogs and textbooks, Volpe tapped her on the shoulder.
“I understand you’re interested in researching a particular Ben Nicholson painting,” he said.
“That’s right.”
“Where is it?”
“I’ve got it here in my handbag,” Levy said, pulling out a small white painting. She told Volpe she had brought it in to compare it with photographs in the archive. When Volpe identified himself as a police officer and announced that he was seizing the work, Levy burst into tears.
At 7:00 A.M. the following day, Daniel Stoakes, Drewe’s childhood friend, was arrested at the nursing home in Essex where he had been working the night shift as a psychiatric nurse. The police waited an hour until his shift was over, then took him aside to say that they would be holding him on suspicion of involvement in art fraud.
“This has to do with John, doesn’t it?” Stoakes said as he was being led away.
Meanwhile, in the United States, Scotland Yard detectives accompanied by FBI agents knocked on the door of two more runners. One was Clive Belman’s nephew, Andrew Wechsler, who had come to the attention of the authorities through a London dealer to whom he had tried to sell a painting. Wechsler had been introduced to Drewe through his uncle, and he told police everything he knew. The other runner was Sheila Maskell, who had received Standing Nude, 1955 from the ponytailed Stuart Berkeley. When she told investigators the story of Armand Bartos and the ill-fated Giacometti, it was clear that she had also been duped.
Provenance Page 25
