Did MI6 'dry clean' this flat to cover up the spy in a bag murder? Not one fingerprint and five missing hours before police called

By Paul Bracchi and Chris Greenwood

PUBLISHED: 21:53 GMT, 6 April 2012 | UPDATED: 01:22 GMT, 7 April 2012

The secret service slang for having removed or destroyed incriminating evidence such as fingerprints from the scene of a crime is ‘dry-cleaned.’

It is a phrase now being used frequently in connection with the case of MI6 spy Gareth Williams, whose body was found locked in a sports bag at his home 20 months ago. The question being asked in law enforcement circles is, was the flat where he lived ‘dry-cleaned’ before police even arrived?

Detectives working on the case — one of the most mysterious and baffling of recent times — are convinced it was, in order to cover up the truth: that a colleague was involved in his death.

The chain of events that led to this sinister conclusion, we have been told, began on the evening of Sunday August 22, 2010, when Mr Williams had arranged to meet up with his sister Ceri.

They had planned to go to a comedy club in the capital. Mr Williams didn’t turn up. Ceri rang her brother’s mobile. He didn’t answer. She tried him at home. He didn’t pick up the phone there, either.

Had he been a banker, say, or in advertising, she might not have alerted his ‘employers’.

But for the past year, he had been working for the secret service — recently qualifying for operational deployment — on secondment from GCHQ, the Government’s listening post in Cheltenham.

So the next morning, she rang mi6. She informed the human resources department of Gareth’s non-appearance the previous evening, adding that his behaviour was totally out of character.

The call was made at 11am. At 4pm, MI6 got in touch with Scotland Yard and officers were dispatched to check on Mr Williams at his flat in Alderney Street in Pimlico. 

He was too late. Gareth Williams, 31, was dead, curled up naked in the foetal position inside a red North Face holdall, which had been padlocked from the outside and placed in his bath. The bathroom itself, as you can see from the first photographs taken inside the apartment, is windowless. It adjoins the master bedroom.

Why had it taken MI6 five hours to contact Scotland Yard? Detectives are in little doubt. ‘The suspicion is that MI6 went round, found him dead and did a pretty damn good “dry-cleaning” job before we even knew about it,’ an impeccable source with full knowledge of the 20-month police investigation told the Mail this week.

FULL STORY: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2126354/Did-MI6-dry-clean-f...