• Choose a category
• All
• Classic-Fiction

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