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Some of the more inscrutable documents had nothing to do with the art world. For example, there were letters to Drewe from the Royalty and Diplomatic Protection Department and from the commander of the Royal Navy, written on behalf of the Prince of Wales. In addition, there were receipts made out to Drewe for bugging equipment and an electronic voice-changer.

A picture was beginning to emerge of a detailed scheme to fake provenances for what Searle had to assume were fake paintings. The letters and receipts went far toward establishing the lineage of these works, but Drewe had gone further: He had somehow come up with shipping, customs, and insurance forms, as well as various reports from restorers, including one from a venerable third-generation business in London. Some of these were undoubtedly phony, but many of the letters, receipts, and catalogs bore stamps from the Tate, the V&A, and other British art institutions. Searle was sure these genuine documents had been stolen.

Having spent years around painters and restorers, Searle knew that the investigation would take months. While all fingers pointed to Drewe as the culprit, there must be others involved, but were they knowing participants or innocent bystanders? Was Drewe forging the works himself, along with the provenances, or did he have an accomplice?

Searle called Goudsmid, his only witness, and asked her about some of the names he had found in the two black plastic bags. She told him that Clive Belman was her neighbor and Danny Berger was a friend who had lost money buying paintings from Drewe. She said Berger wanted to talk to the police but was afraid of Drewe.

What about Peter Harris and Daniel Stoakes?

Goudsmid had never met either.

Who had painted the pictures?

Goudsmid could not say for sure.

“Who brought the paintings to the house?” Searle asked.

“Drewe did.”

“Did they look finished?”

Goudsmid couldn’t tell. Some had come in without a signature. She remembered that Drewe had a book containing the signatures of famous artists and kept it handy.

Had she ever seen him putting a signature on a painting?

No, but she had once seen one of Drewe’s friends correcting or re-coloring a Nicholson painting. “I remember it very well,” she said. “He used a lot of grays.” This retouch man had visited them often, early on. Drewe had introduced him to her as an art historian and adviser to his art collection.

Searle’s ears pricked up. “Batsheva,” he said impatiently, “if you were introduced to this man you must know his name.”

“John Myatt,” she said.

29

NICKED

On a gray September morning in 1995, Myatt lay awake in bed enjoying a quiet half hour before the children had to be ushered off to school. Things had changed. He was done with Drewe and the fakes, finished with the whole sordid mess. Occasionally he thought about the professor and wondered if he would reappear, but he hoped Drewe’s supply of unsold forgeries would get him off the hook. He would never see a nickel from the paintings, but it was a small price to pay for his freedom. More than the money, he wanted his dignity back.

He had been careful with the cash he’d made from Drewe’s enterprise, and he now had a small measure of financial security. He’d put aside an emergency fund of £18,000 as a modest backup, and had reapplied for the teaching job he’d held nine years earlier. Perhaps as a form of self-punishment, he’d given up painting for pleasure. All his life he’d felt the need to paint, but when he looked back on his days as an artist forger, he realized that his special skills with a brush had brought more heartache than joy. Certainly there were days when he missed being in thrall to artistic expression, but it seemed like a fair trade. He had something more precious now—peace and quiet—and he’d just bought a new keyboard and programmed it to play flute and strings and sequences of electronic Mozart.

Still, he knew that he wasn’t entirely free. Of the more than 240 paintings he had produced for Drewe, at least a handful were clunkers, forgeries so poor that