With each passing day more details are emerging of Heywood's business and personal links to one of China's most powerful families, and how it all allegedly went terribly wrong.

Bo Xilai was the Communist Party Chief of Chongqing, a man who ruled this city with an iron fist. He made his name by driving out criminal gangs, sending underground heavies to jail. He presided over strong economic growth and did it all to a soundtrack of communist revolutionary-era songs broadcast on local television.

To many locals, especially the poor we have spoken too, he was a hero. One shoe-shine lady told me he made the streets safer and the city greener.

But to his critics he was an ambitious authoritarian who used his crime-busting campaign to target enemies and rivals.

Now he's in disgrace, stripped of his titles and hidden from view. His former top cop and right-hand man, Wang Lijun, split from Bo and sought refuge in an American Consulate. Sources in the party now claim he'd argued with Bo after raising suspicions the Party boss' wife had a hand in Heywood's death.

The investigation has yet to reveal its findings, but multiple diplomatic, business and political sources talk of Heywood's business and personal dealings with the Bo family.

All the major players are dead or silenced. Dozens of people connected with the case have been arrested and Gu Kailai, Bo's wife, is under investigation for murder.

I finally get one local man to talk. He doesn't condemn Bo. "He should be remembered for the good things he did," he says. But like everyone he is fascinated by the twists and turns of this case.

"Bo Xilai is under investigation in Beijing," he says, "Gu Kailai is his wife, she's involved in the death of that British man Neil Heywood," he tells me excitedly.

As we walk the grounds of the hotel we get even closer to where it all began. Heywood was staying in what has been described as an upmarket villa in the complex. It has a price tag of $700 a night. If so it is greatly inflated.

No one will say which exact villa it was and there is tight security, but we do manage to get inside one of the dozen or so two-story units attached to the hotel. Inside it is as tired and dated as the standard rooms -- the same faded furniture and stains on the walls.

Yet the very state of this hotel, the sleaziness if you like, only lends to the fascination. What happened on the night Heywood died? What will this mean for Bo and his family?

Right now the answers to these questions are locked behind these walls and we can only peer through the windows.