Hot Art (15 page)

“Yes, good evening, Mr. Waterfield.”

“Oh hello, is that Mr. Müller?”

“Yes.”

“Yes, hello.”

“How are you?”

“Fine, thank you.”

Müller said, “Well, I have here a few things which were on the back. There were some things they couldn't read because it was very, very small. They needed a special glass for it but they didn't have it with them but they could read, um, it's as follows:
XTR
...”

“Yes.”

“
TMUM
...”

“Yes.”

“and
M... U... N... US
...”

“Right.”

“then
M... O... I
...”

“Yes.”

“
I... S
. And then a separate
R
. And then the museum, Amsterdam 1952. And that's on the backside.”

“Fine,” Waterfield said.

“Is that correct or... ?”

It was correct.

The director insisted on photographic proof of the painting. Müller wasn't happy but agreed to try. He'd have to phone back. Click.

Waterfield tried to get some sleep. Life had become absurd. The next morning he carried the tape recorder to work under his arm. He tried to conceal it but it was big. He couldn't concentrate. He sat around feeling nervous. His phone would ring. He'd turn on the recorder and answer. A friend: “Giles, how are you?” Turn it off. He'd lie. “Great, great. Never better.” Hang up. Wait. Phone would ring. Tape recorder again. An artist. Turn off the recorder. At noon Müller called. Tape recorder running.

Müller said the photographs should be ready by evening. Waterfield should go home after work and wait at his flat for a phone call with further instructions on where to pick up the photos. Müller warned Waterfield not to talk to the police and added that when Waterfield went to get the photographs he should park his car at a distance from the pickup location. He warned, “Be careful.”

He called back a few minutes later, wanting to make sure Waterfield wasn't on the phone with the police. The police, in fact, were at Dulwich Gallery. Waterfield walked back to his flat. The sky darkened, and so did his mood.
DCI
Evans kept phoning to find out if a meeting place had been arranged. No news. Waterfield waited. His mood sank deeper. Then at 8
PM
the phone rang. Tape recorder on. It was the dreaded voice.

Müller had decided to tell Waterfield a few details about the theft. He said it was an inside job. One of Waterfield's staff was an accomplice. For Waterfield, who trusted his staff, this was horrible news.

Then the voice told him to go to the Playboy Club. “Take somebody with you,” instructed the voice, “for your own health.” The London Playboy Club had opened in 1965, after gambling had been legalized. Girls in bunny suits fawned over men as they stared at legs and lost their money. In 1981, the Playboy Club branch Waterfield was told to visit was the most profitable casino in the world.

When he arrived at the club, these were the instructions: He should ask for the doorman. The doorman would possess an envelope from a man called Leo. Waterfield should collect the envelope and leave immediately. The proof Waterfield was looking for, the photographs of the stolen Rembrandt, would be inside. It was a simple plan. Waterfield hung up. Was somebody from the gallery involved? And he'd been warned about his safety.

Waterfield went directly to meet with
DCI
Evans. Evans was in a bright mood and greeted Waterfield warmly. “Well, Mr. Waterfield? I can't call you that all the time. What's your first name?”

“Giles.”

“Well, Giles, enjoying it, are you?”

“No, I am not.”

They went to the Playboy Club.
DC
Bosworth Davies rode along. Bosworth Davies had been a rugby player at Cambridge, and his pure physical strength reassured the gallery director. Waterfield parked illegally near the club. “For the first time in my life I wasn't worried about getting a parking ticket,” he told me.

As Bosworth Davies and Waterfield left the car, a stranger walked past and nodded. “Hi Boz,” said the undercover officer.

Waterfield entered the Playboy Club. He felt as if he were on stage but didn't know where the audience was or who they were. He asked for the doorman by the name he'd been given.

“Oh, he's away on holiday,” a staff member at the club finally told him. Then the Playboy Club employee pointed to the door. “But try out there.” Waterfield left the club. A small group was gathered near the door.

“Envelope from Leo?” Waterfield asked them.

A man looked at him for a moment, then handed Waterfield an envelope. Waterfield took it and walked briskly back to the car. The officers wouldn't let him open the envelope until they arrived safely at Waterfield's apartment, which was now feeling a little crowded: nine policemen were camped in his living room. Eight of them were drinking beer. The inspector liked whiskey. Waterfield was nursing club soda.

Bosworth Davies delicately eased the mouth of the envelope apart, reached inside, and pulled out nine Polaroid pictures. Waterfield couldn't believe it. Each Polaroid featured the Rembrandt in a different and unglamorous pose. In one, the canvas was propped up behind a rusted sink. In another it leaned on a graffiti-stained wall at the top of a squalid set of stairs. The pictures were somehow pornographic. It was kind of a fuck-you gesture: instead of photographing the painting on a lovely velvet carpet, they'd put it in a dirty washroom.

There was no doubt, though: Müller's men possessed the masterpiece.

Waterfield's phone rang several times over the next half hour. Each time Waterfield reached for the phone, the inspector warned his men that if they so much as moved while Waterfield was on the line he'd kill them. Everyone clutched their drinks in silence.

The callers always seemed to be friends of the director, checking in. “I am lucky to have had such great friends. Of course I couldn't tell them anything.” He felt awkward talking to his friends while nine strange men listened. “Things are fine,” he said. “I'm fine.”

Shortly past eleven, Müller phoned. He was angry. Why did Waterfield go to the Playboy Club himself? he wanted to know. He'd been instructed not to “go by himself.” That, it turned out, had been a code, meaning “don't go in person.”

Waterfield explained that he hadn't understood but that he was satisfied with the photographs. Müller was impatient. The men who had the painting in their possession were getting fed up with the whole thing. They were threatening to set the Rembrandt on fire. They would burn it up. He hung up. Another sleepless night.

Waterfield spent the next day at the gallery, but he was now under the full-time supervision of
DC
Bosworth Davies. “I'm sure it was partly to keep up my morale,” he told me. Nothing happened. Waterfield went home with his clunky tape recorder and waited by the phone. The phone was his life. It was very claustrophobic. He lived a one-minute walk from the gallery.

At eleven o'clock the phone rang. Waterfield stalled for time. He told Müller that the chairman of the Dulwich Picture Gallery was in Finland but would be returning to England shortly; until then nothing could be done about the money. The good news, he told Müller, was that the chairman was onside to pay.

Müller asked if Waterfield could travel to Amsterdam the next day.

Waterfield made excuses, and Müller was sympathetic. They agreed that Monday might be possible. The idea of Müller coming to London was raised. Müller weighed the risks; Waterfield knew they were high. The police wanted to arrest Müller now. The director played it cool. “Don't be too eager,” the police had advised.

Waterfield and Müller wished each other a good weekend, both sounding friendly and warm. Then Müller called back. He'd decided to risk the visit to England, and Waterfield should arrange the ticket. He would arrive at Heathrow airport on September 1 at 9
AM
.

Waterfield drove to the airport to pick him up. In the car with him was David Banwell, the bursar. They sat in Terminal 1 and waited. Müller didn't show.

Waterfield phoned the gallery: Müller had called and left a number. It turned out to be for the Schiphol Hilton, in Amsterdam. Müller picked up. He was angry again. When he'd arrived at the Amsterdam airport, the ticket hadn't been paid for, and it was only a one-way reservation. Waterfield agreed to pay for the full round-trip ticket. It was late morning.

Müller's flight arrived at Heathrow Airport at 1
PM
, and the three men—Waterfield, Banwell, and Müller—drove from the airport in Banwell's car straight to Barclays Bank in Dulwich Village. They sat down with the bank manager, who had been briefed in advance by the police. The manager was fascinated by the case and had received permission from his superiors to play along. The bushes outside the bank acted as cover for several police officers keeping an eye on the meeting.

Point one: Müller wanted a guarantee that there was £100,000 in the Dulwich bank account. The manager confirmed that there was. Actually, the foundation's account held millions.

Point two: Müller wanted to know how the money could be made available to him—banker's draft or cash. If it was a draft, could the draft be rendered void at any point if criminal activity was suspected? They discussed the matter. Müller decided on cash.

Müller threatened that if anything went wrong, he knew where to find Waterfield and Banwell. The meeting wrapped up at 3:45 with no agreement. Müller flew back to Amsterdam.

That night he called Waterfield again. He wanted to fly back to London. Waterfield reserved and paid for another ticket. The flight arrived in London at ten the next morning and the three men met in the airport lounge.

Müller had a new plan. Waterfield was to meet with a new player, an intermediary posing as an art adviser to an American client who wanted to buy the painting for $1.2 million. The extra $200,000 would go to Müller. “It was getting crazy,” said Waterfield.

At the airport, Müller was nervous. He had to find a phone and get in touch with his contact. It had to be a pay phone, but one that wouldn't show up as a London number. Müller didn't want his contact knowing he was in London. There was a specific type of pay phone that didn't show the number, he explained. They could find no such phone in Heathrow. They tried the Posthouse hotel but couldn't find one there either. They hung around the Posthouse for fifteen minutes, and suddenly Waterfield felt like he was surrounded by undercover police officers. He wasn't wrong.

A few days earlier, in Amsterdam, Müller had been observed by the Dutch police at the Schiphol Hilton with a man who turned out to be a German criminal with a conviction for physical assault. Müller and the German had a conversation and then split up. Police followed the German. He flew to London, and went to an apartment in the Cornwall Gardens neighbourhood, where he stayed for the next three days. That building was watched round the clock by police.

This is what they observed: The German and another man emerged from Cornwall Gardens and went to a leather goods shop. A police officer followed them and lingered in the shop. The men wanted to buy a briefcase, but the shop didn't have one the right size. The men visited a second leather shop, found a suitable briefcase, and returned to the apartment. They emerged again with their new briefcase and hailed a taxi.

Their destination was Brown's Hotel, which had two entrances, one on Albemarle and one on Dover. It was a smart location for a quick getaway. The men had booked a room at Brown's for their meeting with Waterfield and Müller. Water-field was supposed to hand over £100,000 in cash, as a down payment. Waterfield had indeed asked for £100,000 in notes, but the police had said, “We just don't have £100,000 lying around.” Instead they packed a bunch of £5 notes on top of some old newspapers.

On that morning, the taxi from Cornwall Gardens was trailed by five police cars. When it arrived at Berkeley Square, in front of Brown's Hotel, the police surrounded the taxi and asked the men inside, “What do you have in your briefcase?” The briefcase was opened, and there he was: Jacob. That team phoned a second team of police who were trailing Waterfield and Müller, watching the pair as they looked for pay phones at the Posthouse hotel. A dozen police officers surrounded Waterfield and Müller, and placed Müller under arrest. Water-field sat down in the hotel lobby. What had happened? Was it over?

Waterfield was driven to Dulwich police station. He was led into a room to look at a painting. It wasn't in its frame, but it was the Rembrandt. It appeared to be undamaged. The last time he'd seen it was in a Polaroid, propped up against a rusty sink, in what was now revealed to be the apartment at Cornwall Gardens.

Waterfield sat there with the artwork, in the police station, for three hours.

“I felt thrilled. It was like a parent getting back a long-lost child,” he said.

After Waterfield finished telling me his story, I asked him if he could list the resources the police had dedicated to his case— Paul and I had often discussed the gap between resources for little cases and those for “headache art.” Paul's point, repeated over and over, was that as a thief you don't want to draw that kind of attention to your criminal activities. Any contact with police was a negative. “Once you attract the attention of law enforcement, an enormous amount of resources can be brought to bear on you. It's exactly what you don't want,” Paul said. “It also draws the ire of other criminal organizations, because police start beating down doors, asking questions, disrupting business as usual.”

Waterfield thought it over for a moment. “The resources the police dedicated to finding this painting were incredible.” Here is a partial list: one tape recorder, the Flying Squad (armed police officers) watching Cornwall Gardens,
DCI
Evans,
DI
Sibley,
DC
Bosworth Davies, the London officers camped out at Waterfield's home while he negotiated with Müller, and the Dutch police following Müller's movements in Amsterdam twenty-four hours a day. “I was told later that during that first meeting at the hotel in Amsterdam, almost every person in the lobby was a police officer—the person at the front desk, the bartender, the people sitting in the lounge.” Waterfield was also told that on the first day, they were followed by two motorbikes and a car.