A Mother's Ire Provoked

This tale has the potential of a gripping, seamy, political plot for a sensational novel.  Someone will surely pick up the thread and run with it. 

A British citizen living in Beijing where he has become a close ally of an influential politician and his wife.  Talk about elite connections.  Talk about money-making opportunities.  Friendship with that fortunate man's political family leading to a business partnership with a billionaire Chinese prepared to invest in a venture that would rake in millions for both of them.

Except, as happens so often with the best-laid plans, the unexpected intervenes, and the deal falls through.  Irritating the Brit no end, for he hasn't untold wealth to fall back on, and he has been infuriated by the wealth that he hoped to acquire and could smell the fragrance of, feel it in his feverish hands, simply vanished.  Life can be so unfair.  And he is, furthermore, living in interesting times.

Made all the more interesting by Neil Heywood demanding tens of millions from his friends' son.  A young man who attended Oxford and Harvard.  And whom Mr. Heywood obviously felt he could bully far more successfully than the young man's father and mother.  Whereupon Mr. Heywood sequestered Bo Guagua, 24 years old, informing him that he would be kept incommunicado until money miraculously appeared to soothe the savage beast in Mr. Heywood.

The wonder of modern technology: young Bo Guagua called his mother from his cell and his cellphone, alerting her to his untenable situation.  Mr. Heywood was incautious enough to infuriate powerful people; Bo Xilai was a Politburo member, named as a possible candidate for an even more prestigious position within the Communist hierarchy, over and above his position as governor of Chongqing.

Gu Kailai, Bo Xilai's wife and mother to Bo Guagua took the threat against her son most seriously.  And she determined that with the aid of a family servant, Zhang Xiaojun, Mr. Heywood, for his troublesome antics deserved to leave the land of the living.  The two conspired to murder Mr. Heywood, and did, by the administering of a poison. 

When Gu Kailai had sought the assistance of a good friend who happened to be the local police chief to aid her son from Mr. Heywood's blackmail attempts, he hesitated to become involved.  But he became involved in another way, by revealing to members of the Politboro that he was in possession of information that would incriminate Gu Kailai in the unfortunate death of British businessman, Mr. Heywood.

Mrs. Gu's lawyers elicited sympathy from those involved in the most instant trial imaginable, with the swiftest judgement of guilty as charged as might be possible in a country that takes irritations and embarrassments at the top political level very seriously indeed.  Bo Xilai can no longer hope to retain the status that crumbled under his feet with the revelations of his wife's involvement in the precipitous death of an importunate Britisher.

And Mrs. Gu, despite claims that she suffered from manic depression and mild schizophrenia will most certainly rue the day she fomented a demented plot of pay-back to someone who abused her family's friendship.