EVEN IF THE PRC HAS DEVOLVED INTO NOTHING BUT A KLEPTOCRACY...:

As the cyanide took effect, Neil Percival Heywood must have looked around at the tacky photos of trees and waterfalls on the mustard-coloured wallpaper and wondered how he ever got involved in the vicious world of Chinese politics.

The dingy room at the Lucky Holiday Hotel - a three-star hilltop resort in the Chinese metropolis of Chongqing where Heywood was found dead on November 15 last year - was a long way from his childhood in a middle-class London suburb and his education at Harrow, the elite private school attended by Winston Churchill and Lord Byron. Although he had become increasingly worried about his involvement with one of China's most powerful political families, and had seen enough to know how they dealt with those who crossed them, he thought it very unlikely they would kill a foreigner.

Heywood could not have imagined that his murder would spark the biggest Chinese political scandal in at least two decades and expose an elite power struggle that has shaken the ruling Communist party to its core. After spending nearly half his 41 years living in China, mostly working as a small-time business consultant and fixer, his death in the secluded, run-down guest house was blamed on "excessive alcohol consumption" by the Chongqing police.

His remains were quickly cremated, without an autopsy, on the authorisation of his family. According to people familiar with the matter, Heywood's Chinese wife Wang Lulu was pressured by the Chongqing authorities to agree to the quick cremation and was so distraught when she arrived in the city that she sent her brother with a British consular official to identify the body. Almost every single staff member at the Lucky Holiday Hotel was replaced over the following month and all current employees have been warned not to discuss the incident with anyone.

Back in the UK, Heywood's sister, elderly mother and friends were told he died of a heart attack, as his father Peter had in 2004 at the age of 63. At a memorial on December 19, in St Mary's Church in Battersea, London, the Heywood family was joined by many of Neil's old Harrovian schoolmates. "At least some of us were puzzled and concerned by the circumstances of Neil's death and the story that he'd died of a heart attack," says one person who attended. "Those of us that knew who he was connected to in China felt something more sinister had happened."

The Lucky Holiday Hotel was a favourite spot for Gu Kailai, wife of Bo Xilai, a member of the elite 25-member politburo of the Communist party and the man who ruled like a king over Chongqing, a city-province with a population of 33 million and a land area the size of Austria. For Heywood, virtually all of his modest success as a business consultant for British companies in China stemmed from his 15-year relationship with the Bo-Gu family and it was Gu Kailai who arranged for him to come to Chongqing and stay at the forlorn, mist-shrouded compound last November. It is here that she is alleged to have murdered him using potassium cyanide, reportedly administered in a drink with the help of a household orderly and bodyguard named Zhang Xiaojun. The government announcement on April 10 of her detention on suspicion of "intentional homicide", and her husband Bo Xilai's suspension from all his posts because of "serious discipline violations", sent shockwaves through Chinese politics.

The death of an obscure British consultant had brought down one of China's most powerful politicians, a man who had been favoured to ascend to the ruling nine-member Communist party politburo standing committee at a once-in-a-decade power transition later this autumn. While Gu and Bo remain in detention awaiting an official verdict, their downfall has also revealed a deep rift among the top echelons of the Communist party and debunked the idea that authoritarian China has managed to institutionalise an orderly succession process in the absence of democracy. But Heywood's suspicious death would have almost definitely remained a mystery and Bo would still be a rising political star if it wasn't for the actions of one man - Bo's once-loyal and fanatical chief of police in Chongqing, Wang Lijun.

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