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overlooked the game, with a view both of law enforcement and of the criminals and thieves who were doing such an expert job of evading the law. He seemed to enjoy being on the shadow line of those two worlds, but it was always a mystery how deep his relationships were on either side. Like Jonathan Wild, he moved in both networks. But beneath the veneer, Paul possessed a coherent view of the multi-billion-dollar industry that was sweeping across the planet.
    â€œIt’s a marvellous time to be an art thief,” he said. “Art theft has become one big game. It’s just one big circular game. Art and antiques are objects that don’t change. They remain exactly as they were made. What changes is who owns them. People pay small fortunes to own them for a period of time. So the objects get passed around the country, and now the world. Their value increases. Ultimately, they outlive us all.” Paul found the game of international art theft both amusing and absurd. Police were always ten steps behind thieves, and for every art theft that was publicized in the media, hundreds never made the news. These thefts were practically invisible—as if they had never happened. “For every Picasso that is stolen, there are hundreds of lesser-known works of art that are never reported,” said Paul.
    If I hadn’t already spent time learning about art theft from Bonnie Czegledi and Rick St. Hilaire, I would have been disappointed that Paul hadn’t stolen from any major museums. But it was precisely because the two lawyers had both pointed toward the larger black market and the interplay among thieves, middlemen, and the network of international dealers that I became so interested in Paul, in the way he had operated as an art thief. He was a missing piece of the puzzle, and he confirmed much of what the lawyers and detectives feared was happening. He was exactly the kind of thief St. Hilaire had suggested I find—one who had perfected how to sneak through the system and make a profit without attracting attention.
    It was easy to make a living from stealing art, according to Paul, if a thief made intelligent choices, if he stayed below a certain value mark—about $100,000. Less was better. Don’t steal a van Gogh. To someone who knew how to work the system, the legitimate business of fine art became a giant laundry machine for stolen art. You could steal a piece and sell it back into the system without anyone being the wiser.
    â€œIt’s called ‘pass the hot potato,’” Paul told me. “A dealer sells it on to the next dealer, and the next, until nobody knows where it came from. It’s a fantastic system! And that system is the same wherever you are. It doesn’t matter if you’re talking about London, New York, or New Delhi,” he explained. “Art is something you have to think about as a commodity that goes round in circles. The only time it appears in the open is when someone tries to filter it into the legitimate art market—auctions, art fairs, gallery sales, dealers. Otherwise it’s hidden away inside someone’s home.”
    Paul loved to chat and seemed thrilled that someone who was following the international art theft dramas wanted to discuss them with him. I had hoped that Paul would be a good background source, someone to check details and theories with. But he turned out to be far more valuable.
    From a young age, Paul told me, he had received the training necessary to climb the criminal ladder. His career matured around the same time that art theft transformed from an eccentric criminal pastime into a multi-billion-dollar global industry, during the boom in fine art sales, in the 1980s. “It was always about supply and demand,” he said. “And during those years, demand had never been higher for fine art and antiques.”
    On that night in Plymouth, in 1980, after the failed burglary, the two boys drove through the dark to