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Searle asked Goudsmid what specific evidence she had to back up her claims that Drewe was involved in theft or forgery. She took him and Dick Ellis out to the parking lot, led them to her black BMW, and opened the trunk to show them two black trash bags filled with documents. In one of the bags Searle found letters from the 1950s, some bearing the Tate Gallery archive stamp, along with ledger pages, gallery stationery, and photographs of paintings purportedly by Giacometti, Dubuffet, and Nicholson. The other bag contained a handful of pen-and-ink sketches and a group of color photographs of paintings of the Crucifixion, each a different color—yellow, green, pink, and dark blue. Searle recognized them as Graham Sutherlands, though it wasn’t clear whether they were genuine.

“This is all Drewe’s,” Goudsmid said. “And there’s much more.”

Searle pulled Ellis aside and told him it was all good, solid evidence. “Nicked or forged, you’ve got a case.”

28

THE MACARONI CAPER

Ellis made a pot of tea and sat down with Searle. He explained the circumstances of the fire at the Lowfield Road boardinghouse and the subsequent lineup. Detective Higgs’s investigation into the tragic death of the young Hungarian woman had hit a dead end, and although the fire was outside the Art Squad’s jurisdiction, it was an indication that Drewe was a dangerous man. Ellis and his men could at least do their best and put Drewe away for fraud.

Ellis also filled Searle in on the recent stream of phone calls from suspicious art dealers and Tate curators. He had concluded that Drewe was a master manipulator who had gotten one over on the hallowed museum. “When you give an art archive £20,000, they give you the key to the door,” he said.

Finally, Ellis told Searle that Drewe was already a familiar figure to the Art Squad. He had first surfaced a year earlier, when he called the Yard with inside information on a number of paintings he said had been stolen by the Mafia and were stored at a Hampstead restaurant called the Macaroni. He invited the police to meet him at the Battersea heliport to discuss the matter, and specifically requested the presence of Charley Hill, then head of the Art Squad. Hill, who had been described by one reporter as a “solid presence and deliberately unmemorable—like Alec Guinness,” was something of a celebrity. A gifted impersonator and mimic with a specialty in Mid-Atlantic accents, he had helped to recover The Scream by posing as an American art expert.

At the appointed time, Hill and a colleague waited at the heliport and watched as Drewe landed in a top-of-the-line Bell Jet Ranger and emerged with his two children. The heliport staff seemed to know him well and ushered the group into a conference room.

Drewe introduced himself as a scientist with twin passions, physics and the arts. He seemed bright, articulate, and engaging. Hill was impressed, but he couldn’t shake the sight of the two unhappy-looking children sitting quietly in the back of the room.

Drewe launched into the Macaroni story. He said he was having dinner at the restaurant when he overheard the owner talking about a group of stolen artworks he had recently acquired. Drewe took the owner aside and told him he was an art dealer who was always looking for interesting work—if the price was right. The owner showed him several pieces, and Drewe said he might be able to fence them.

Charley Hill listened.

Drewe reached into his briefcase and handed him photographs of two paintings, one by the presurrealist Giorgio de Chirico, the other by his contemporary Filippo de Pisis.

The professor had a proposition: He would set up a sting operation at the restaurant if Charley Hill would pose as his buyer.

The detective was skeptical. What was Drewe doing in an alleged Mafia-connected hangout in the first place?

The professor leaned over and lowered his voice. “I’m a sayan,” he said, and explained that sayanim were Israeli sleeper agents living in-conspicuously in cities around the world. If the Jewish state’s secret service needed practical