Britain raised doubts about Neil Heywood's death with Chinese four times The Foreign Secretary said that "urgent representations" were first made to Beijing on February 15, when the deputy head of mission at the British embassy met officials from the Chinese foreign ministry and informed them of suspicions that Heywood had been murdered and requested a full investigation. The level of diplomatic pressure was increased six days later when Sebastian Wood, the British ambassador to China, made the same the request to a senior official at the Chinese ministry of foreign affairs and again a week later with the ministry's director for Europe. In the absence of any direct response, the Foreign Office's consular director "raised the case in the same terms with a visiting senior Chinese consular official in London," Mr Hague said. It was only on April 10 that the Chinese authorities said an inquiry had begun into Heywood's death in Chongqing, after it emerged that Heywood had a business relationship with Mrs Gu, whose husband had since been ousted as party leader in the central city. He has since been since stripped of all his party positions and some observers in China suspect the official case now building against his wife is a part of an orchestrated attempt to ruin his reputation. But Mr Hague's version of events made it clear that the Foreign Office only swung into action after being informed by the Americans that Mr Bo's former police chief had told them he suspected Mrs Gu was responsible for killing Mr Heywood, an Old Harrovian who had lived in China for 20 years. He worked as a deal-maker between British and Chinese businesses and some time consultant for the corporate intelligence firm Hakluyt. This was despite the fact that, as Mr Hague admitted, British expatriates had as early as January 18 made embassy officials of rumours that Heywood had been murdered. Consular officials had accepted the Chinese explanation that the Briton had died from excessive alcohol and did not question his family's decision to have him cremated on November 18, four days after his death. It is now widely believed that he was poisoned. The Foreign Office was also embarrassed by the fact that the Chinese failed to provide information about Heywood's death to Jeremy Browne, the foreign office minister, even though he began a two-day visit to Chongqing on the day Heywood was found dead in his room at a mountain-top resort hotel. British consular officials in Chongqing were informed of Heywood's death on November 16 by fax. Mr Hague said that ministers were not "routinely told about the death of British nationals or other consular cases as they are so numerous," but he pledged that procedures would be renewed for "relevant cases."