On arrival, Drewe was marched down a long corridor straight to the hospital wing. His manner had become increasingly lofty over the years, and during the first few weeks he spent as much time as he could in the wing with one complaint or another. Later, when he was thrown in with the rest of the population, he managed to establish himself as something of an expert in the intricacies of the law. It was said that he charged one inmate £10,000 to prepare a failed appeal. In the yard, among the thieves and dope dealers, miscreants and tai chi practitioners, he stood out like a sore thumb. The place was filled with immigrants from Russia and Colombia, from Jamaica and Latvia and Poland, from India and Vietnam. There was an Irish unit and a group of black gangsters from East London. Apparently, Drewe worked nights in the prison library and kept to himself until the word got out that he had a clear mind and a particular agility with paper. He was asked to offer his legal expertise several more times, and gladly gave it for whatever additional comfort he might receive in such dismal quarters.

One day in the summer of 2000, Drewe was brought up to the front office, given his old suit and the few belongings he had with him when he came in, and released. He strolled out, his long arms dangling and his head held high. He had served about four years of his six-year sentence, including time spent awaiting trial.

He appealed his conviction, claiming he had not received a fair trial and was denied proper counsel. The appeal was denied. Police estimate he made at least $2 million from the scam. Drewe returned to his well-rehearsed role as a citizen above suspicion. He lived comfortably in Reigate with Helen Sussman, his wife, and still claimed to be a physicist. Whenever reporters called, he stuck to his story. It was all the government’s fault, he said. He was a victim of a cover-up involving secret arms deals with rogue countries. Whoever came along and offered him air time or ink became the subject of repeated entreaties. He would chat for hours and invariably volunteer to supply documentation—forty-two boxes of it—to prove his case. He always failed to deliver, and he consistently broke appointments.

A death in the family, he would say.

A medical emergency.

A business trip to America.

He claimed to be working on all manner of extraordinary military inventions. He filed for “technical patents” having to do with improvements to propulsion methods through the use of a spinning disk and a substitute for the liquids used in hydraulic machines. He was looking into remote-powered surveillance vehicles the size of insects. He claimed to have received funding from an American source and was conferring with the head of procurement for the U.S. Defense Department. No matter that this self-described avant-garde agitator, child of the father of the atom bomb, and doctor emeritus of all things had spent years in police custody. He was determined to make his mark on America. He was heading across the pond, to Langley and beyond. He had places to be, people to meet, many men to see.

Drewe’s fifteen-year disappearance from the official record from the late 1960s to the early 1980s still puzzled his erstwhile pursuers. He had come out of the blue and conducted a sophisticated nine-year-long scam, but there was no record of his earlier activities. Even after the case was closed, some police officers wondered what he might have been up to. He had managed to elude the public record: There was no evidence of prior mischief; no link to other crimes; no medical, tax, or formal employment records.

Miki Volpe managed to track down Drewe’s mysterious “sugar daddy,” John Catch, the wealthy patron at the Atomic Energy Authority whose art collection Drewe claimed he was going to inherit. Catch had never collected art, as it turned out, and Volpe discovered that all records of John Cockett, as Drewe was known then, had disappeared from the AEA. Catch, of course, was surprised to learn that he’d been at the center of an art scam—less so when he learned it had been run by his former protégé, who in the early 1990s had tried to use his name as a reference on a résumé Catch knew was filled with fabrications.

In 2000, a bizarre story appeared in the Mail on Sunday suggesting that there had been a connection between Drewe and the “secret world,” a possibility the police had never entirely discounted. The Mail reported that MI5 had played a practical joke on Drewe by using his home address as a front to register dozens of cars used for tracking foreign agents. According to the report, the intelligence services had targeted Drewe as payback for his public insistence that his crimes were committed at their behest. The story emerged after police traced a suspicious vehicle to Drewe’s address, whereupon he revealed that his family had been receiving letters addressed to the front company for years. Drewe later claimed he had unwittingly provided “business services” to MI5, and demanded payment from its director-general, Stephen Lander.

After Drewe’s release, those who had brushed up against him seemed incapable of separating fact from fiction. They believed he still had them under surveillance and that he would attempt to harm them. They advised others to keep their distance.

“Don’t give him any personal information,” warned a former friend. “Tell him lies. He can get in your head if he knows any little thing about you.”

Other acquaintances cautioned reporters to be on their toes, not to sign anything in Drewe’s presence, not to leave signed documents anywhere near him. Everyone who had ever dealt with him had taken a turn for the worse, they said. He was Hannibal Lecter with a ballpoint pen and a paintbrush.

There is no doubt that Drewe was a convincing and accomplished fabricator. Many of his interrogators, though they were not mental health professionals, considered him to fit the description of a pathological liar. Pathological liars are sometimes referred to as “folded,” emotionally “enveloped” by their imagined selves, and thus

“origamists,” from the Japanese word for folded paper birds and animals. The origamist reflects a childhood deficit, say psychologists. If he goes unnoticed by his parents—if he is neither rewarded nor loved—he can “become” someone else in order to seek the attention and praise that has been denied him.

Some psychologists believe that pathological liars cannot help themselves, that they have an uncontrollable impulse to deceive. Their lies simply tumble out. They connect ideas on the run and assemble disparate whoppers to produce a believable whole. Con artists and habitual liars, with their inconsistent stories about their education and family background, are also apt to be expert mind readers, with a special understanding of the psychological vulnerabilities of others. They are able to suppress and regulate their emotions and successfully mask their own nervousness. Many of these counterfeit personalities also possess exaggerated verbal skills and can lie without inhibition. Often, they have at least one other trait in common: They hold a grudge against the establishment.

There is some evidence that pathological lying is genetic and can be passed on from one generation to the next. In a study published in 1995 in the British Journal of Psychiatry, scientists interviewed 108 employees of a temp agency and asked them about their employment and family history. After thoroughly checking their backgrounds, the investigators discovered that 12 of the 108 interviewees had made up much of their professional and personal histories and admitted to lying habitually. After the dissembling dozen agreed to have their brains scanned, it was discovered that their prefrontal cortexes contained 25 percent more white matter than the average person’s. The white matter serves as the brain’s routing system, and according to the study, this extra measure of connective circuitry partially explains the liar’s ability to confabulate convincingly, to tell tall tales without stumbling, and to seamlessly rattle out an imaginary narrative.³⁷

Drewe’s brain would have been a gift to any forensic pathologist. Volpe and Searle often marveled at the sheer volume of myth and confetti he’d managed to scatter behind him. For a long time, whenever they felt overwhelmed by the long evidentiary trail, they would repeat the mantra “Keep it simple,” which served as a reminder that his massive constructs were but a series of sordid criminal transgressions, cons within cons. He had left behind him a trail so long and twisted that no one would ever be able to chart every curve and cul-de-sac. It was all a charade, wasn’t it? Charlatan’s debris, random bursts of lightning intended to guide the victim’s eye away from the hand.

Years after the case the detectives would come across bits of data that still didn’t compute, and they would file these away, along with the other irritants and intangibles that had lodged in their memories. They would express both annoyance and admiration, for Drewe had been able to juggle a dozen outrageous constructs at the same time, all the while staying several steps ahead of them. He had damaged the reputations of a good number of upstanding citizens (many of whom should have known better), and he had left dozens of victims in his wake, some of whom would try, and fail, to make sense of it all. The case of one possible victim—the young Hungarian woman who perished in the boardinghouse fire—remains open. Unless there is new evidence, it is unlikely that it will ever be “closed,” especially to the satisfaction of police detective Higgs.

Questions also remained about a possible second forger. Myatt repeatedly told police he had nothing to do with Rene Gimpel’s 1938 “Nicholson” watercolor and at least three other paintings. How many forgers and fakes were still in the wind?

A decade after Drewe’s trial, the Art and Antiques Squad was reduced in size once more. Faced with the prospect of being shut down entirely, a new squad leader came up with a new idea—to recruit curators and art historians who would serve as “special constables” and have the power to make arrests. The Yard promised that officers from this newly formed division, dubbed Art Beat, would be ready to patrol London’s art scene by 2007.

The new squad leader did not give up. He carried on with his plan by recruiting volunteer Art Beat constables from the V&A and the British Museum and giving them four weeks’ training in police procedure. He had special uniforms made up and put the new constables to work patrolling the antiques markets in Bermondsey and the gallery areas of Kensington Church Street, Bond Street, and Camden Passage.

Art crime continued to rise. The Art Loss Register, a comprehensive international database, reported that art forgery was costing the market some £200 million annually in the United Kingdom alone, the world’s second-largest art market. Hundreds of collectors remained oblivious to the fact that their “masterpieces” were worthless fakes. The ALR had retrieved several thousand forgeries, but because British police were forbidden to destroy them, unlike their counterparts in France and Belgium, known fakes often reentered the market.

At the Victoria and Albert Museum, the Art Squad put together an exhibition on art forgery. The show featured Drewe and Myatt’s tools and products, including forged paintings, typewriters, and phony rubber stamps. Drewe’s equipment was bequeathed to Scotland Yard’s infamous Crime Museum, where it was awarded a spot not far from Jack the Ripper’s display and the hangman’s noose.

In December 2003, the government formed its own Giacometti Foundation, and inherited all the works in Annette’s estate. The foundation filed multiple court proceedings in an attempt to dissolve the association, and tried without success to seize the Cour de Rohan building, which Annette had designated as the headquarters for the foundation she had desired. Palmer and the association successfully fought off every attempt by the foundation to shut it down, and is suing France in the European Court of Human Rights.

The foundation was seen by some as a commercial enterprise rather than an entity devoted to protecting and promoting the artist’s work. In 2006, the foundation hired the prominent Gagosian Gallery in New York to sell posthumously created sculptures and prints. Critics said the sales would cheapen Giacometti’s work and provide forgers ample room to ply their trade.

Meanwhile Palmer and her husband continued with the work of the association by authenticating Giacometti paintings and sculptures, tracking forgeries, and working on the decisive catalogue raisonné.

In retrospect, she believes that if Sotheby’s had been able to send the Footless Woman to Paris after it was pulled from auction in 1991, it could have been seized by police, an investigation launched, and Drewe’s scheme possibly derailed.

Goudsmid never returned to work. After Drewe won initial custody of the children, she could hardly work and fight him in court at the same time. The protracted battle had left its mark. Though she tried not to think about the past, she kept boxes filled with legal transcripts and documents from the Drewe wars. She’d been through horrendous years with this man and she had lost a great deal. At least she emerged with one thing intact: Neither the police nor anyone else could ever say she’d done anything but tell the truth.

The Tate pulled its socks up and opened a brand-new research room with state-of-the-art technology and tighter restrictions. Staffers were trained to examine everything that went in and out. Librarians kept watch over the researchers as surveillance cameras scanned the room. The Hanover Gallery archives now included a prominent warning from the police department directed at future researchers: “This documentation may have been compromised.”

Myatt had been warned about the filth and monotony of prison life. The director-general of the prison service himself had referred to Brixton as a “hellhole.” Inmates sometimes spent twenty-two hours a day in their cells, and three quarters of the eight-hundred-strong population had reading and writing skills below those of the average eleven-year-old.

Myatt’s blockmates nicknamed him “Picasso,” and soon he was doing portraits of them in exchange for phone cards. He painted a picture of a notorious rapist who had been “chemically castrated,” and another of one of the prison wings, which he had to sketch on the sly to avoid the security cameras. Another showed the inside of an inmate’s cell with a lewd portrait on the wall.

In his own cell, behind the coils of razor wire and the blackened brickwork of the drab Victorian building, Myatt’s belief in the power of prayer flourished. He felt a constant and comforting link to his church and his community. He knew that back in Sugnall his reputation remained intact, and that the townsfolk held church vigils for him and prayed for his well-being and swift return. As a homecoming surprise, they had begun to refurbish his kitchen. Early mornings in his cell, before he opened his eyes, he imagined himself back on the farm.

In June 1999, after serving just four months of his one-year sentence—a stint his fellow prisoners called “a shit and a shave”—Myatt was sprung for good behavior. As he left he swore that he would never paint again, and that if he ever made any money, he’d give it to his church.

The day after he got out he received a cheerful and unexpected call from Searle, who wanted to know about his future plans. Myatt told him that he was putting his paints away for good.

“Big mistake,” said the detective. “You have a God-given talent. You know, you could still make a living off it.” He asked whether Myatt would be willing to paint a portrait of his family. Myatt said he’d think about it.

Myatt was nearly broke. Most of the £100,000 he’d earned from Drewe had already been spent on the kids, who were in boarding school, and he’d given a good deal to the church and the Salvation Army. The £18,000 he had when he was caught had been handed over to the police. Over the next few days he reapplied for his old teaching job and began conducting the church choir. He joined a small, dedicated chorale that specialized in medieval music, and every so often he played piano for them. He was ill at ease without a paintbrush in his hand, but he reminded himself that he’d been given a second chance and had vowed never to return to his old ways.

Then, Searle called again. “I’ll pay you five thousand pounds for the portrait,” he offered.

The thought of making money legally by painting appealed to Myatt. It was also a relief: Giving up painting was a promise he knew would be difficult to keep, like a smoker who claims he’s going to quit for good.

“Okay,” Myatt responded.

He traveled to London to Searle’s house, where he met his wife and four children, ate a beautiful meal, and then took out his brushes. When the portrait was done Searle put the painting up in his dining room and proudly showed it off to his colleagues.

Soon the word was out that Myatt was back in business. He was surprised to hear from one of the prosecutors who had put him away. The man said he wanted a Myatt for himself, so Myatt pulled out his turps again, cleaned his brushes, bought a few tins of paint, and set up his easel. In the full light of day, with the windows open and Bach on the stereo, he finally felt that he was doing good, honest work, and whenever a new commission came in, he went at it with a vengeance.

By September 2002 he had set up his own legitimate business, Genuine Fakes. His first show was a roaring success: He sold all but three of sixty-five paintings, and commissions began to come in from Italy and the Philippines, from the United States and Canada. He was asked to lecture on the business of art fraud, and sat on panels next to art experts and detectives. Inevitably, someone would come up and commission a new piece.

Within a couple of years genuine Myatt fakes were hanging in ski lodges in Aspen, and in Tuscan villas. He ran the business with his new wife, Rosemary, a potter and a member of the church choir. Friends said he would have been lost without her. He must have been doing something right, he thought. He was working at what he loved and living with someone he adored. Visitors noted that he was open and articulate, loved to laugh, and often sounded like an excited boy, speaking in vivid metaphors and lyrical bullet points rather than whole sentences.

When the Giacometti Association asked him to photograph each new fake so that they would have a record of his work, he agreed. He had no plans to go back to Brixton Prison. Clients who asked for Braques and Picassos sometimes requested that he refrain from placing his indelible “Genuine Fakes” inscription on the back of the piece. He refused. Experts had warned him that a client could simply reline one of the canvases and pass it off as an original.

He often thought about the dozens of pictures he’d made for Drewe, the ones that had vanished over the years. He knew that each time they changed hands, the provenance became more solid and detection less likely. Whenever he saw his work in a museum or auction catalog, he kept it to himself. Blowing the whistle wouldn’t benefit anyone, he thought. If he were to reveal the true nature of the work, it could cost an innocent collector a lot of money. Furthermore, he had a personal interest in the continuing existence of his paintings. Once a forgery was discovered, its life was over. The painting disappeared into a kind of artistic limbo, the resting place for all fakes. By his own reckoning, some of the work he’d done for Drewe was quite good, and he didn’t want any of it destroyed. The paintings that had made their way safely into collections and museums were now part of the history of art.

When the media sought Myatt out in Staffordshire, he refined his story. The press portrayed him as a reformed antiestablishment figure, a charming farm boy who had put one over on the hoity-toity set. The story also had a moral, a shout-out to the art world to wake up and look at art for what it was, not for what it was worth. Sometimes Myatt told interviewers that Drewe’s scam was an extended piece of conceptual art, a subversive work that employed as its medium the vagaries of the art market.

Myatt and Rosemary moved to a sixteenth-century farmhouse they restored near Stafford, not far from the run-down house he had inherited from his parents. There were seven acres surrounded by rolling hills and dotted with cows and a Druid mound that the local witches visited on Halloween. Myatt set up his studio in a sunlit stone barn next to the house. He dreamed of a future in which he could retire from the business of genuine forgeries and devote himself to his own genuine Myatts. He had learned a good deal from the artists he’d copied over the years, and he could always knock out an “after,” but he wasn’t sure what his own work looked like. On the rare occasion when he summoned the nerve to face his own stuff, he froze up. He feared that he might not be up to it. Most of all, he feared failure.

In 2004, Myatt got a call from Sky TV asking whether he wanted to host a ten-part series in which he would teach aspiring artists how to paint in the style of the world’s greatest artists. The show was called Mastering the Art, and Myatt did very well by it. He stood affably on a hillside with his easel and taught the basics of forgery, many of them learned from Drewe: how to rub soil onto canvas to replicate a Braque finish, how to use coffee to age a painting a hundred years. In 2009, Sky televised him again, this time in a six-part series, on portraiture in which he paints celebrities in various styles while interviewing them.

Myatt had come a long way. He found it curious that despite all his transgressions, he had been rewarded in the end. He had joined forces with a man sometimes described as fundamentally evil, but in return he had been blessed. He was fifty-nine years old, in love, and enjoying financial success. His works were now selling for up to £50,000. He still recalled Drewe’s moments of kindness and encouragement, and often reminded himself that if he’d never stepped over the line, if he hadn’t met Drewe and gone to prison, he would never have hit pay dirt. It was all a great mystery. In the late afternoon, when he walked his property with his energetic dog Henry, he felt happier and richer than ever.

Crime did pay.

“I know I’ve been very lucky,” he told the London Sunday Times in 2007. “I f***d up but I’ve been given a second chance. And there’s nothing illegal this time. All my paintings are marked as fakes. In fact, I quite like the idea that people can look at my paintings and decide whether they like it or not without all that high-art bollocks. They haven’t got to stand in front of it and say: ‘Oh, it’s a Van Gogh, so we have to like it.’ It gives people a chance to see past all the toffey-nosed, art-critic bullshit. I mean, 40 million quid for a painting! Why can’t these people give the money to the Salvation Army or build a new wing at the local hospital?”

Myatt began receiving increasingly important commissions, particularly from the United States. He loved the Americans. One New Yorker wanted a Picasso so large that Myatt would never be able to get it out of the studio. Six feet by six feet was the limit, he told the Yank.

“That’s okay, John,” said the American breezily. “You make it as big as I want it and you’ll find a way.”

John and Rosemary visit New York often and like to stop in at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Myatt had received several commissions to paint knockoffs of Monet’s Morning on the Seine, an image so popular that Walmart had marketed a lithograph version for $174.37. He spent hours in front of the original. He felt as if he were back in London in the old days, walking through the museums and basking in the light of the Turners and the Gainsboroughs and the Constables. He liked to get as close to the Monet as he could without attracting the guard.

One day, with his nose just inches away from the canvas, he noticed several hairs from Monet’s brush stuck on the surface of the painting. Myatt had always made sure that his own work was hair-free, but this Monet follicle seemed to reach out to him. The message was clear: There really was no such thing as a perfect painting. Myatt swore that the next time he found a hair stuck to his canvas, he’d leave well enough alone.