WHEN you walk into Sam Shaker's jazz club it looks like a shrine to Amy Winehouse set up since her tragic death last month.
But the striking portraits of the singer on the walls of Jazz After Dark - one of Amy's favourite places - were lovingly painted by Sam throughout his decade-long friendship with her.
They have been on display in his club in London's Soho for years as a tribute to her talent.
Now, though, there are four gaps on the wall where thieves have stolen some of the precious portraits since she died.
Sam - the man Amy called her "second dad" - is devastated and disgusted that people could be trying to cash in on the star's death.
Pointing to the wall in the side room he calls Amy's VIP area, Sam says: "Before Amy died, people called her names and they would ask me why I had so many paintings of her. They would say, 'She's a junkie. Why do you put a junkie on the walls?'
"Nobody liked Amy. They focused on her drug addiction. Now they want to steal Amy."
Egyptian-born Sam was at his studio in Alicante, Spain, when the pictures were stolen last week.
He fled there after her death to work on three unfinished oil paintings of Amy, commissioned by the star before she was found dead - aged just 27 - at her flat in Camden, north London.
But when he was in Spain he was too grief-stricken to work on the remaining canvases.
Sam, 72, says: "When Amy died I couldn't stand it here so I went to Alicante to finish some of the paintings. But I found myself completely stressed and distraught.
"I couldn't find Amy's CDs - they have sold out in Spain, just like here - and how can I paint Amy without listening to her music? I always listened to her albums when I painted her."
It was at Jazz After Dark that Amy's family and close friends held a tribute on July 28, two days after her funeral.
The amazingly lifelike images of the star - including those on these pages - stare down from every wall, her trademark beehive and tattoos re-created with photo-like precision.
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