Fashion shows?

Bo used government money to set up a modelling school filled with gorgeous young women, and then put on fashion shows to prove to his visitors just how beautiful Dalian was. Not just the greenery and the museums but the women too.

“He surrounded himself with beautiful women. If you weren't beautiful you couldn't work for him,” says his wife's friend and former colleague, Larry Cheng.

“He stayed late at work and hardly ever went home. His office lights were always on even in the middle of the night. The people of Dalian thought he was working so hard and said they had a great mayor. But he was probably up to something with those beautiful women.”

I've talked to several government people in Dalian who say Gu did a good job of scaring off at least one rival. They also say there were young models who simply disappeared. I couldn't get to the bottom of these rumours.

But this is China. If you control a city, you control the police, the courts and the media. You can make people appear... and you can make them disappear.

One man who has first-hand experience of this is Dalian businessman Zhang Yongxiang. One moment Bo wanted Zhang's help in taking down one of his enemies, the next he had become an enemy himself, finding out what it meant to incur the mayor's displeasure.

He says Bo set up a team of interrogators, who tortured his family, forcing them to endure nine days and nights of interrogation without sleep.

Sixteen members of the family were detained, and police were hunting for more.

“My cousin was on the train from Dalian to Shanghai to take my sister-in-law to hospital. On the way back, he somehow fell off the train and was killed,” says Zhang. “The police said he jumped. But I don't believe them. Did they beat him to death? Did they shoot him dead? The police owe us answers.”

And until they get those answers, the family refuses to bury the body. They've been waiting 15 years.

That's the dark side of Bo Xilai's Dalian. None of it was visible to the public. As far as they were concerned they had a perfect mayor and he had a perfect wife. Charming, good-looking… one Western businessman who worked in Dalian in those days compares them to JFK and Jackie Kennedy.

Though their marriage was by now a sham, husband and wife still kept up appearances for the sake of the power and the money. But Dalian was never going to provide enough of either.