Provenance

by Laney Salisbury

  Back in London, as Volpe and Searle sifted through the evidence from Drewe’s home, they realized that the heart of the scam was in his computer. They found templates for many of the fake catalogs he had used to provenance the forgeries, including Bartos’s nude and Gimpel’s 1938 Nicholson watercolor. Searle was still looking at the evidence with an eye to picking the best paintings for trial, and the evidence on the Gimpel painting was particularly strong. He had a catalog on Drewe’s computer, a report from Gimpel’s restorer, Jane Zagel, and testimony from Belman that he had received the work from Drewe. That Myatt hadn’t painted the watercolor was a plus: It strongly suggested that a second forger was involved, and that Drewe’s operation was more far-reaching than it appeared. The evidence on the Bartos nude was good too. There were catalogs, receipts, eyewitness accounts of Drewe at the V&A, and Palmer’s extensive detective work. Bartos was convincing and would make a good impression on the stand.

  Volpe had discovered something else during the raid on Drewe’s home: a series of photographs showing a pair of hands tearing photographs out of the Hanover catalog in the bound volume. There were also photos of a forged version of the catalog superimposed on the same binder. Apparently Drewe had taken these highly incriminating snapshots himself. Psychiatrists believe that successful con artists take a special pride in their work, a “contemptuous delight . . . in manipulating and making fools of their victims,”36 and the detectives could only wonder whether the photographs were Drewe’s attempt to record his own accomplishments for his own future delight.

  As they pored over statements from more than a thousand witnesses and reports from chemical analysts and document specialists, Searle and Volpe searched for further physical proof linking Drewe to the forged documents in the archives. Thus far most of the evidence was circumstantial. Volpe hoped the Hanover photo albums at the Tate might give him something more solid.

  He contemplated the photographs of the Footless Woman and Portrait of a Woman. Nothing in Drewe’s home provided incontrovertible proof that he’d taken them. Then Volpe noticed the typed labels beneath each photograph and remembered that they had seized three typewriters from Drewe’s home. Searle had confiscated a fourth typewriter from Drewe’s mother’s house. Why would Drewe, who was so adept at computers, have four old typewriters hanging around? The labels might provide the answer.

  Volpe asked Adam Craske at Forensics to analyze each of the 260 labels in the Hanover photo albums. Over time, because of damage and wear, typewriters develop faults and misalignments that render their typescript unique. By analyzing the typescript on the Hanover labels Craske determined that some 250 of them had been typed on a single typewriter. Another seven had been typed on a separate machine, one with damaged serifs on the lowercase l, w, and i. The top of the number 3 was flat rather than curved, as in the large group of labels, and certain other keys were slightly out of line, so that the characters showed up on the page as heavy on one side and light on the other.

  Craske also analyzed the paper on which the labels were typed. Modern paper contains chemical brighteners that glow under ultraviolet light. Forensic specialists can tell whether a page has been added or replaced in a multipage document, and can reconstruct whole sheets of paper from shreds based on the differing luminescent intensities. Craske used luminosity as a gauge to compare the age of the labels and discovered that the group of seven glowed intensely, whereas the bulk of the others were dull. When Volpe read Craske’s report, he noted that those seven labels corresponded to paintings Scotland Yard had identified as Drewe’s forgeries.

  Volpe wanted to establish an even more solid connection, proof that Drewe himself had typed the labels. He asked Craske to look at the four confiscated typewriters. Craske examined the typescript of each and found that the cream-colored Olympia typewriter from Drewe’s mother’s house matched the typescript on the seven labels.

  Volpe drove to Burgess Hill to pay a call on Drewe’s mother and stepfather. When the stepfather confirmed that Drewe had used the typewriter several times, Volpe had his link between Drewe and the fake provenances at the Tate.

  After five weeks of sifting through evidence, scanning forensic reports, and hauling in Drewe’s runners, Volpe and Searle had cornered him. Now they had to get him in the cage.

  33

  SOUTH

  A few days before Drewe was scheduled to report at the police station for a second interrogation, someone rear-ended his car by accident. The next day Searle and Volpe received a note from Drewe’s doctor stating that he had seriously injured his back and needed bed rest. The formal interrogation was postponed.

  A few weeks later they received a similar note: The professor had a herniated disc and could barely move. Soon after, a third doctor’s note announced that Drewe was suffering from muscle spasms in his back. In mid-June, nearly three months after the raid, the police received two more notes, which made for a total of five separate notes from four different doctors.

  On June 20, an officer happened to spot a healthy-looking Drewe nimbly rooting through a trash bin outside his old house on Rotherwick Road. Goudsmid had thrown out a pile of his old books and asked him to come by for them. The officer watched Drewe hop effortlessly into his car and drive off.

  The doctors’ notes continued to come in, but Drewe’s recovery appeared to be total. He was seen going about his business as if nothing was wrong: putting air in his tires at a garage; kissing an unidentified woman in his car; pacing up and down the platform at the train station.

  In mid-July, a judge ordered him to return to the Reigate police station for questioning. On the day of the interview, Searle was on his way to the precinct when he spotted Drewe walking briskly up the hill toward the station, twirling a pair of walking sticks and whistling. A few minutes later Drewe walked into the station in an altered state. He appeared to be in considerable pain. He was leaning heavily on his sticks and seemed years older than the man Searle had seen minutes earlier.

  “You’re looking good,” Searle joked.

  Drewe had brought in a top-grade criminal lawyer named Ben Rose, a young black-belt kickboxer who was known as a shrewd operator, and he immediately urged his client not to answer any questions.

  In the interrogation room, Drewe ignored the advice. He straightened his tie, set his briefcase down, and began his usual recitation. This man cannot stop himself, thought Volpe. We’re a captive audience. Volpe, Searle, and a detective named Nicky Benwell fired off questions, and Drewe seemed to thrive on the attention. He wasn’t fazed in the least. It was the detectives’ impression that he was pathologically incapable of telling the truth. Although he acknowledged that he owned the exhibits Searle showed him—fake catalogs, paintings, and letters—he wove a complicated story around each. He would not admit to having forged anything, and at every opportunity he tried to pin the con on others, mostly Danny Berger and Myatt.

  Volpe caught Drewe on almost every lie. When Drewe claimed he had traveled to New York to research ICA documents, Volpe told him U.S. immigration had no record of a John Drewe or a John Cockett having entered the United States.

  Drewe shrugged. He insisted that Danny Berger and Peter Harris had sold most of the paintings. Volpe reminded him that Harris had had his voice box removed in 1991 and would not have made for a good salesman.

  Why did Drewe’s computer have several templates for fake catalogs, including the Hanover Gallery’s?

  Drewe insisted the templates were all genuine. He said his company had kept a complete database on the history of London’s important galleries, but that he had nothing to do with forged catalogs. He furthermore claimed that he was computer illiterate, and that if he needed anything scanned, he relied on his son, Nadav.

  Volpe asked Drewe whether he had placed false documents in the Tate and V&A archives. Drewe denied it.

  “But you’ve been seen showing Bartos a fake Hanover Gallery catalog while you were in the V&A,” the detective said. “We found the genuine catalog in a V&A bag a
t your home the day after that meeting. How do you explain that?”

  “Berger gave me the catalog,” Drewe said without hesitation.

  Volpe expressed his belief that Drewe had played havoc with the records of the Whitechapel Gallery as well as galleries and museums in Brighton, Bath, and Leeds.

  For a moment Drewe seemed to lose his composure. “I don’t care what documents you’ve got,” he said. “I don’t care what people tell you or what statements they’ve given. I’ll refute them. It’s a stitch-up.”

  It was late afternoon, and the detectives told Drewe and his lawyer that they were done for the day. They would resume tomorrow.

  For the next few days Drewe came in and answered their questions in greater detail. By the end of the fifth day, the police felt they had enough to counter each of his statements.

  The formal interrogation was over, but Volpe could hardly contain his irritation. For the past week he had worked hard to keep his distaste for Drewe in check. Now he wanted him to know he hadn’t bought his story. When Drewe got up to leave, Volpe stopped him and pointed at the door.

  “Mr. Drewe, can you tell me what color that door is?” he asked.

  “Well, Mr. Volpe, it’s blue,” said Drewe.

  Volpe thanked him. “That’s the first truthful answer you’ve given me in five days.”

  By late 1996, the detectives had winnowed down hundreds of witness statements and pulled together a solid collection of exhibits. Drewe’s lawyer had agreed on a trial date.

  In December, just days before the first court hearing, Drewe was rushed to East Surrey Hospital with a suspected heart attack. The judge received a doctor’s note saying that Drewe suffered from unstable angina and needed eight weeks’ bed rest. If at all possible, he should be spared the stress of a court appearance. A few days later Drewe was diagnosed with diabetes and hypertension and hospitalized for “urgent cardiac investigations.”

  Two months later the judge again ordered Drewe to appear in court, but Drewe produced yet another report urging further medical attention. Summonses went unheeded, and the prosecution received a copy of an angiogram that they would later believe to have been faked—in what perhaps was the first case of someone stealing the “identity” of the inside of another person’s heart.

  Finally, on May 9, 1997, thirteen months after the raid on Drewe’s home, the court issued a warrant for his arrest.

  “Get him here, even if he’s on a stretcher,” said the judge.

  Two officers went to Drewe’s house to bring him in. Atarah came to the door. Her father was away, she said, and then she excused herself to take a phone call. The officers waited at the door while police traced the call to a restaurant on Marylebone Lane. Detectives rushed to the restaurant. The manager told them that a man resembling Drewe had just left, but that he had been overheard talking on the phone.

  “Tell them your dad’s in hospital,” the diner had said into the receiver. Then he left in such a hurry that his female companion had to “trot periodically to keep up with him.”

  Perhaps knowing that he had exhausted the court’s patience for his excuses, Drewe vanished. He’d never had much use for credit cards, so the police were deprived of a traditionally effective tool for tracking people down. They feared he might flee the country and issued an all ports warning.

  For a man who incessantly dropped names, Drewe seemed to have no personal friends. However, he had a strong attachment to his mother, and Volpe thought it prudent to send an officer down to keep an eye on her home in Burgess Hill. The officer soon noticed that she rented a car once a week, always on the same day. Volpe told him to follow the rental car.

  As Drewe’s mother made her way south ten miles to Hove, near Brighton, the officer stayed close behind and watched her park near a pay phone to make a call. Ten minutes later a man drove up in a Mercedes. The officer, who had questioned Drewe a few months earlier, recognized him and approached.

  “Hello, Mr. Drewe,” he said.

  Drewe calmly turned around to face him. “My name’s not Drewe. It’s Carnall.”

  “Mr. Drewe, I’ve interviewed you. I know who you are.”

  “You’re mistaken,” Drewe said politely.

  “You can say what you want, but you’re under arrest.”

  Drewe turned to run, but the officer jumped him, got him in a bear hug, and cuffed him. Drewe’s mother watched as her son was put in the back of the squad car and driven off.

  The officer took Drewe to Belgravia station in London, where detectives were able to sketch out a timeline of his activities during his short stint away: He had rented a posh flat in Brighton under the name of Dr. Carnall and had always paid in cash. He had kept himself busy writing a letter to the Times criticizing the Tate’s monopoly on art and mailing off a thirty-one-page j’accuse to the Metropolitan Police, alleging that they were involved in a widespread government conspiracy against him and were harassing him.

  At the station he faked another heart attack and was taken to hospital, where he was examined, pronounced fit enough to travel, and sent back to Belgravia. As he awaited further interrogation, he fell to the floor clutching his chest. Again he was hospitalized briefly before being released into police custody.

  On August 6, 1997, he was finally brought before the court. This time there would be no bail. He was remanded into custody and sent to Brixton Prison to await trial. It was clear to him by now that the Crown had a strong case, with dozens of incriminating paintings and boxes of documents as evidence of his crimes. Between visits to the prison doctor, he began to devise a surrogate defense.

  For years he had been concocting alternate realities based on a heady amalgam of novels and newspaper reports, imaginary plots involving arms dealing, covert wars, and the Holocaust. Now, for the court’s benefit, he would string these together to create a comprehensive tale that would clear him of all charges. He would put his improvisational skills to the test at Southwark Crown Court, where he intended to provide details of a huge government conspiracy involving the weapons trade and the intelligence services. He would have the jury in the palm of his hand, and he would return to his country home with his reputation intact, and even enhanced.

  John Drewe’s trial date was now fixed for September 22. His strategy was to wage a war of attrition against the Crown, to wear the prosecution down with constant requests for disclosure, including full details on the witnesses, paintings, and documents that the prosecution intended to produce in court.

  Drewe had accumulated a complicated medical record and was given a bed in the prison’s hospital wing. Brixton was Britain’s oldest nick, and it had a reputation as one of the most squalid in London. It had introduced treadwheels in the nineteenth century as a form of punishment and had recently been hauled over the coals by the nation’s corrections minister. Drewe did not want to spend any more time there than he absolutely had to.

  On the opening day of the trial, he was ferried to Southwark Crown Court by private ambulance, with EMS personnel and escorts. The prison authorities had failed to provide a wheelchair for him, and when he stepped out of the ambulance to climb the courthouse steps, he saw his chance. Clutching his chest, he collapsed.

  In the courtroom, Searle and Volpe heard the commotion and ran outside. Drewe was sprawled on the ground. Moments later, to the detectives’ dismay, he was carried back to the ambulance and driven off. Once more he had managed to delay the trial.

  When he returned to Southwark a few days later he had a front-row seat in a courtroom that resembled a combination art gallery and accounting firm, with a bank of typewriters displayed on a long table and some of Myatt’s best forgeries hanging on the walls in all their bogus glory. The Crown’s evidence was stacked away in a small courthouse room with wire racks holding piles of boxes, and containers loaded with exhibits covering the floor. The police report ran to more than three hundred pages, and the jury bundle was a whopping six hundred pages long. All told, the cops had gathered some four thousand items,
interviewed more than a thousand witnesses, and recovered about eighty paintings from dealers, auction houses, and collectors around the world.

  The prosecution, led by John Bevan, had secured the cooperation of Drewe’s runners, a handful of angry dealers and authenticators who were willing to take the stand, and a dozen former Drewe associates who had been ripped off or in other ways betrayed. To make the case manageable, only nine of the hundreds of works that had passed through Drewe’s hands over the years would be entered as evidence: two in the style of Sutherland, including Nahum’s panel; one in the style of de Stäel; another in the style of Bissière; plus three “Ben Nicholsons”—including Gimpel’s 1938—and two “Giacomettis,” one being Bartos’s Standing Nude, 1955.

  Drewe, Myatt, and the luckless Daniel Stoakes, who had knowingly posed as an art collector, were about to stand trial.

  34

  THE TRIAL

  I always thought it’d be better to be a fake somebody than a real nobody.

  —TOM RIPLEY in Patricia Highsmith’s

  The Talented Mr. Ripley

  From the first day of the trial—Regina v. John Drewe, John Myatt, and Daniel Stoakes—it was clear that Drewe was a courtroom buff’s delight. Flawlessly attired, he carried himself with the haughty manner one would expect from a top-shelf patrician. He was never tentative and had an air of confidence about him that bordered on arrogance. Looking around the courtroom, an observer would have guessed that he was anyone but the plaintiff. He crackled with energy, perhaps fueled by the chocolate bonbons he regularly plucked from a box at his elbow and popped into his mouth. When the judge chastised him for one of these candied distractions, he explained that his diabetes required him to keep his blood glucose at a certain level.