Guardian : The beguiling power of mystery that can make us forget a family's pain

The beguiling power of mystery that can make us forget a family's pain/

Our desire for life to be dramatic can lead us to merge real-life stories such as the death of Gareth Williams into fiction

Henry Porter | The Observer | May 6, 2012

The obvious, though almost entirely forgotten, truth about the deaths of the SIS cryptanalyst Gareth Williams and the British businessman Neil Heywood is that they were loved by their families and friends and this grief is no less than any of us would suffer.

But this barely registers when the public scents a real-life thriller – the appetite for intrigue and mystery quickly trumps any respect for the bereaved as we marvel at the artfulness of fate. Either the news is becoming more like thrillers or thriller writers are people of exceptional prescience who have somehow fracked the drama out of modern times with new precision.

In the Williams and Heywood deaths, it's really striking how they comply with the laws of mystery writing and, without changing a single detail, these exact circumstances could easily have been written into serviceable fiction.

In the Heywood murder, we have a police chief who takes refuge in the American consulate after alleging the murder; Heywood's main patron, an ambitious Maoist governor, destined for the top; and his wife, who is alleged to have had an affair with Heywood and who is also known to have imported hot air balloons from Somerset, as a means to conceal the illegal transfer of cash from China.

Like the Williams case, where the brilliant young victim was found locked into a red holdall, it is all too bizarre, much richer and more extravagant than most mystery writers have the capacity to imagine. Yet conventions are respected. In both stories, there is an unexplained death of a man who is engaged on secret, or at least highly secretive, work and who expires out of context – the old Harrovian Heywood was in China and Williams was killed in an anonymous flat in London, away from his home patch of Cheltenham. We are struck by their isolation and the lonely terror of their final moments, though to dwell on this is far from entertaining.

In both cases, families, colleagues and the authorities were slow to realise what had happened and it took time to establish that Williams and Heywood had in fact been killed. There were different degrees of cover-up in both stories and these suggest hinterlands of corruption and intrigue in Chinese and British authorities. We have no idea why these two apparently blameless individuals were murdered, exactly how they met their deaths or what was – or still is – at stake. In fiction, the whole thing would be wrapped up in under 500 pages by a heroically flawed, and therefore lovable, protagonist, who solves the murder and, by the by, exposes the conspiracy.

Here, the real world and fiction part company, because in neither case is there likely to be a completely satisfactory solution. Gareth Williams and Neil Heywood will be memorialised in headlines about the manner of their deaths (Spy in the Bag, Death in a Hotel Room), not by loving epitaphs. Life is rarely as neat or as just as fiction.

Yet there's good evidence that we desire a merger, or overlap, of reality and the fictive world – a demand for narrative in the news and a requirement that the works of the imagination should be based, as the movies say, on actual events. We want life to be melodramatic, because, despite impressions to the contrary and the hysteria of the war on terror, most human existence in the west today is peaceful and humdrum and bears out the theory in Steven Pinker's book, The Better Angels of Our Nature, that violence in history is in steady decline.

However, modern societies are beautifully set up to meet the plot demands of a thriller. We communicate with each other incessantly; we are at all times watched and photographed and traceable; and we move around a lot and are often far from home. (Incidentally, when I hear the words "a British businessman", my Pavlovian response is to expect trouble, as in any of the following verbs – murdered, jailed, extradited or disappeared.)

Reality has obliged us with high-concept melodrama, inconveniencing many a writer of hard-boiled dialogue and diabolic scenarios. "You couldn't make it up" is the phrase that springs to our lips as we contemplate jetliners piling into skyscrapers, US Navy Seals snuffing out Osama bin Laden – with the president and secretary of state on the other end of the live feed from Seal head cams – and the chief of the IMF ruling himself out of today's French presidential election by molesting a maid in a New York hotel that was miraculously wired for compromise.

You couldn't make it up, nor would you. As a writer of espionage fiction, I am not sure I would have dared to imagine Anna Chapman and the herds of Russian spies, grazing in America's suburbs and communicating with each other's laptops by coded wireless transmissions, while – and here is the bizarre and unimaginable part – conveying very little useful information to their spymasters in Moscow Centre. I would not have made up MI6's phony rock with its secret compartment, lying in a Moscow park, because it seems exactly like something a thriller writer would make up.

That story may provide a hint of what is going on. Not long after 9/11, I was on a book tour in Canada with a female novelist, who made a persuasive case that thriller writers had corrupted the imagination of mankind by enabling evil men such as Bin Laden to act out their extravagant fantasies. The constant drip of conspiracy and demonic plotting had changed us for the worse, she argued, rather like porn distorts sexual behaviour.

The first proper thriller writer was Erskine Childers, who in 1903 published Riddle of the Sands, a novel slightly less thrilling than Childers's own life, which was ended by a firing squad in 1922. But not before he shook hands with its members and told them: "Take a step or two forward, lads – it'll be easier that way." It was as though Childers had jumped out of one of his own novels. There was a confusion of author and character; his fiction was somehow decreeing how his life should end.

Ever since then, writers of intrigue have also been participants in the great game (Maugham, Buchan, Fleming, Greene, le Carré) and have benefited hugely from their experience.

Those who do not have that time in the trenches take care to stand close to power and politics and it would be odd if, over the course of a century of this relationship, some kind of exchange did not occur.

Daily Mail : Did spy-in-bag killer slip back into flat through skylight to cover his tracks? New theory emerges over MI6 codebreaker death

Did spy-in-bag killer slip back into flat through skylight to cover his tracks? New theory emerges over MI6 codebreaker death

* Theory rival spy 'trained in the dark arts of the secret services' murdered British agent
* Mystery of second mobile phone containing video of victim dancing naked in nothing but cowboy boots

By Daniel Miller | May 6, 2012

Detectives investigating the mysterious death of the body-in-the-bag spy believe a killer could have slipped back into his flat through a skylight to cover his tracks, it has been claimed.

MI6 codebreaker Gareth Williams was found dead in his London flat in 2010. A coroner ruled that he was 'probably killed illegally and his family remain convinced he was the victim of a rival agent.

Many close to the case believe he was assassinated by a spy working for foreign powers because of his work for MI6 and the US National Security Agency.

Speculation over the exact nature of his work has been growing since Foreign Secretary William Hague signed a public interest in order to stop details being released on security grounds.

It has been claimed that MI6 and the government eavesdropping centre GCHQ, to which Williams was attached, have been working on a computer virus designed to disrupt Iran's nuclear programme.

Questions are also being asked as to how MI6 came into possession of a second iPhone belonging to Mr Williams when Police found only one at his flat.

The agency handed over the mobile containing a video of Mr Williams dancing naked except for a pair of cowboy boots after his death was discovered.

However MI6 workers are forbidden from taking their personal phones into work and experts believe it is unlikely Williams would have risked bringing in a phone containing such a video.

Curiously the iPhone discovered by police searching the flat had been completely wiped of all memory.

Investigators are now believed to be working on a theory that the second phone was taken from the flat after Williams died but before police conducted a thorough search of the property.

MI6 regulations mean efforts are made to contact any employees who do not arrive at work by 10pm, yet Mr Williams' disappearance was not reported for eight days.

Another irregularity was the fact that heating in the flat had been turned up full blast - possibly because it would have accelerated the rate at which the body decomposed - helping to destroy any evidence.

The Sunday Mirror newspaper reports an intelligence source as saying: 'It's never been mentioned that there is a skylight but it was pretty clear to a lot of people in the case that there was no better way for the killer to get back into the flat.

'They could have come back to clean up the crime scene and got in through the skylight while police were outside.

'Of course, if MI6 were involved in his death that is one explanation for how they managed to get his phone.'

Anthony O'Toole, a barrister representing the family, has suggested that Gareth could have been killed by someone who specialises in 'the dark arts of the secret services.'

Coroner Dr Fiona Wilcox said the theory that Mr Williams was killed by a spy was 'legitimate line of inquiry'.

She has questioned the motives of those who leaked details about Mr Williams's private life, including his visits to bondage websites. His family say the visits could have been work-related.

Police wasted time on false leads generated by the leaks. Reports that Mr Williams went to gay bars in the Vauxhall area of London, and visited websites on sadomasochism and claustrophilia – the sexual pleasure of confined spaces – proved to be false.

Dr Wilcox said Mr Williams was not a transvestite and that his collection of £20,000 of unworn women's clothes were probably gifts for friends.

She said the cause of death was unnatural and likely to have been criminally mediated' and dismissed claims that Mr Williams had entered the sports bag seeking sexual gratification.

The coroner said: 'I wonder what the motive was for the release of this material to the media. I wonder whether this was an attempt by a third party to intimate a sexual motive.'

Daily Star : COPS ‘WILL SOLVE’ SPY IN BAG DEATH

COPS ‘WILL SOLVE’ SPY IN BAG DEATH

May 6, 2012

POLICE have vowed to solve the mystery surrounding the death of the “spy in the bag” amid claims of a Secret Service cover-up.

Detectives are convinced MI6 spies are not telling all they know about Gareth Williams, 31, who was found naked in a padlocked holdall two years ago.

Scotland Yard’s Detective Chief Inspector Jackie Sebire has the backing of Britain’s top cop, Commissioner Bernard Hogan-Howe, to force them to come clean.

They have even threatened to drag in Foreign Secretary William Hague, who is overseer of MI6.

Spooks believe Mr Williams was either killed by a Russian or Chinese spy trying to turn him into a double agent, or that he died during a bizarre sex game that was part of his personal life that failed to show up in vigorous vetting.

A police insider said: “Scotland Yard will not give this up without a fight.”

Daily Mail : Scotland Yard investigates transvestite smear against spy Gareth, but no disciplinary action will be taken

Scotland Yard investigates transvestite smear against spy Gareth, but no disciplinary action will be taken

May 6, 2012

Detectives have investigated allegations that police smeared MI6 spy Gareth Williams – but have ruled out taking disciplinary action against any officer.

Scotland Yard's internal investigation unit examined claims that officers leaked information which led to false media reports that Gareth Williams was a transvestite who was the victim of a sex game that went wrong.

The leaks shifted attention from the spy's work with MI6 and GCHQ, the Government's secret listening station, to his private life.

Last night, the Met confirmed its team had ruled out disciplining any officer over the leaks.

In 2010, Mr Williams's family complained to officers they were learning more about the investigation from newspaper reports rather than from police briefings.

Detective Chief Inspector Jackie Sebire, who is leading the investigation into Mr Williams's death, told his inquest last week that the leaks diverted resources from genuine lines of inquiry.

The spy's body was found on August 23, 2010, locked inside a holdall which was placed in the bath at his home in Pimlico, Central London. The victim had last been seen by his colleagues ten days earlier.

Last week, coroner Dr Fiona Wilcox questioned the motives of those who leaked details about Mr Williams's private life, including his visits to bondage websites. His family say the visits could have been work-related.

Dr Wilcox said Mr Williams was not a transvestite and that his collection of £20,000 of unworn women's clothes were probably gifts for friends.

She also dismissed claims that Mr Williams had entered the sports bag seeking sexual gratification.

The coroner said: 'I wonder what the motive was for the release of this material to the media. I wonder whether this was an attempt by a third party to intimate a sexual motive.'

Scotland Yard's internal investigations unit was asked to look at the leaks after concerns were expressed by Det Chief Insp Sebire.

A Metropolitan Police spokesman said: 'Concerns were raised that information relating to the investigation had been placed in the public domain.

The force initiated an exercise to assess the concerns. A decision was taken not to proceed further.'

Police wasted time on false leads generated by the leaks. Reports that Mr Williams went to gay bars in the Vauxhall area of London, and visited websites on sadomasochism and claustrophilia – the sexual pleasure of confined spaces – proved to be false.

Det Chief Insp Sebire told the inquest that she had seen at first-hand the
distress the leaks had caused the Williams family, but insisted: 'They did not come from my team.'

A senior police source said that suspicions surrounding the source of the leaks initially centred on counter-terrorism police officers and MI6.

Last night a Whitehall spokesman denied MI6 was responsible for the smears but declined to say whether the Service was also investigating the claims.

A memo released to the inquest revealed that senior officials at GCHQ, where Mr Williams spent most of his career, were concerned about the leaks.

Last night, a GCHQ spokesman declined to comment on the memo or any investigation into the leaks.

MI6 and GCHQ were criticised by the coroner for waiting more than a week before raising the alarm about Mr Williams's absence.

Dr Wilcox also hit out at counter-terrorism officers who liaised with MI6 and GCHQ, and police officers investigating the spy's death.

She said evidence that could have helped the inquiry was only passed to detectives once the inquest was in its second week.

Last week it was revealed that police are planning to take DNA samples from up to 50 spies.

Dr Wilcox said the possibility that another spy was involved in Mr Williams's death was a 'legitimate line of inquiry'.

At the end of the inquest, Mr Williams's family criticised SO15, the Met's counter-terrorism branch, for the 'total inadequacies' of its investigation into MI6.

The family said: 'Our grief is exacerbated by the failure of MI6 to make even the most basic inquiries as to Gareth's whereabouts and welfare.

'We are also extremely disappointed at the reluctance and failure of MI6 to make available relevant information.'