When the rabbits are all dead the hunting dog is boiled for food

The events leading up to Wang's flight to the US consulate in Chengdu, a 300km drive from Chongqing, remain shrouded in mystery, with various accounts of possible scenarios circulating in political and diplomatic circles.

According to the government's official account, released after Wang's trial in mid-September 2012, Wang fell out with Gu in mid-December, 2011, just one month after helping her to cover up Heywood's murder.

This account gave no explanation for the falling out but said their relationship steadily deteriorated and that four of Wang's close associates were placed under “illegal investigation” at the end of December 2011.

On January 28, 2012, Wang informed his patron that he possessed evidence that Gu had murdered Heywood. The next day, a furious Bo confronted him and slapped him in the face before banishing him from his sight.

There are a number of theories as to why Wang went to Bo with his evidence, the most credible of which seems to be Wang's realisation that a Party anti-corruption investigation into him and his past was closing in. In an attempt to secure Bo's protection, he presented him with the bombshell of Heywood's murder, implicitly suggesting he could make it all go away if Bo guaranteed his safety.

Another theory is that Wang did not know or care about the investigation in Tieling and it was actually his blind loyalty to Bo that caused him to miscalculate by presenting what he knew and asking for advice on how to handle it.

Regardless of Wang's motives, it was at this point that Bo's arrogance and sense of invulnerability got the better of him.

Virtually every single one of the dozens of people interviewed by the FT believes that if Bo had agreed to protect Wang in exchange for making the case go away, then Heywood's death would never have been revealed as murder and Bo would have remained a leading contender for a top Party post in the autumn of 2012.

“If Bo were modest and down to earth, he could have looked after Wang Lijun but he saw him just as a tool or a dog and dismissed him, that was his fatal mistake,” said one Party theorist with close ties to the leadership. “He was just too arrogant and his sense of entitlement and invulnerability was too great.”

A few days later, Wang was told by a top official from the Party's organisation department that he was no longer police chief and on February 2, 2012, the Chongqing government announced he would serve as the city's vice-mayor in charge of sports, sanitation and education instead.

On February 5 he appeared in public at Chongqing Normal University and talked calmly to local reporters about the importance of his new responsibilities and how seriously he took them.

An account circulated in Chinese on the internet and described as “90 to 95 per cent accurate” by US government officials, reported that Wang Lijun was placed under heavy surveillance after his demotion and that most of his personal staff, including his bodyguards and driver, were taken away.

According to the account presented at his trial, Wang excused himself from work on February 6 and secretly fled to the US consulate in Chengdu. According to the Chinese internet account, Wang disguised himself as an old woman to evade the security teams watching him, sneaked out of his apartment and left alone in a waiting car.

He did not show up for an appointment he had made at the British consulate in Chongqing and instead drove the 300km to the city of Chengdu, where he called the US consulate from a cellphone and made an appointment to visit that afternoon. He entered the consulate at 2.31pm and after chatting for a short time about environmental protection, education and science, he asked for US government protection and formally requested political asylum, claiming Bo Xilai was planning to have him killed.

Wang appears to have been aware of a US government rule that forbids its embassies or consulates from ejecting any asylum seeker whose life is in immediate danger and that is why he stressed the threat from Bo.

He also provided compelling technical evidence of Heywood's murder and Gu's involvement, as well as tales of political intrigue involving Bo Xilai and other senior Chinese leaders.

Consular staff were in constant contact with the US embassy in Beijing and also with the White House, which made clear that Wang's application for asylum would not be accepted.

Chinese vice-president Xi Jinping was scheduled to travel to the US the following week and trying to smuggle Wang out of the country at such a sensitive time in Sino-US relations was seen as untenable.

Wang's reputation as a hardliner who manipulated the law for political ends and oversaw a police force that practiced torture also made it very difficult for the US government to consider his asylum request.

Early in the morning on February 7, Wang was told he could not stay in the consulate indefinitely and would not be granted asylum; he then suggested he could surrender to the central government rather than Bo Xilai or the Chongqing authorities.

US ambassador Gary Locke explained the situation to China's state security ministry, which dispatched Qiu Jin, vice-minister of state security, to collect Wang from the consulate.

Early that same morning, Bo Xilai was told of Wang’s escape. He immediately sent dozens of heavily-armed uniformed and plain-clothed Chongqing officers to Chengdu, an area completely outside his jurisdiction.

Within hours, photos were circulating on the internet showing a heavy police presence encircling the US consulate in Chengdu and speculation was rife about what had happened.

At one point a car carrying consular staff and their family members attempted to leave the consulate compound and was stopped by threatening plain-clothed men carrying automatic rifles who insisted on searching the vehicle. This incident prompted Washington to make a formal complaint to the Chinese government over the endangerment of its consular staff and their family members.

In the evening on February 7, Chongqing mayor Huang Qifan and vice-minister of state security Qiu Jin entered the consulate to see Wang, who became emotional and “hugged it out” with his former colleague Huang, according to someone familiar with the matter.

Wang eventually left the consulate a little before midnight, accompanied by Qiu, who took him back to Beijing in the first-class cabin of a commercial airliner the next day.