"In the UK they say there is no free lunch, but have you seen the Chongqing Public Security Bureau? It costs 10 million a month!" Beijing lawyer Li Zhuang, who was famously arrested by Wang in 2009, said. Police chief Wang Lijun and lawyer Zhou Litai photographed in the police cafeteria. Wang, on trial today for myriad crimes including defecting to the United States, built a fancy canteen at every district police station after he was promoted to police chief in 2009. The centrepiece was a vast two-storey dining establishment with brass fittings, golden floorings and curtains at the opulent bureau headquarters – replete with its own lake - that he renovated in downtown Chongqing. A local lawyer, Zhou Litai, who dined with Wang there on several occasions, fondly recalls the a-la-carte Japanese, Chinese and Western food, followed by offerings of seasonal fruit.

But dining at the central police cafeteria was a ceremonious and austere occasion, with Wang, of course, at the centre of the liturgy. "People wait for him before they start eating and they would often line up and applaud to welcome him into the room," Zhou said. "He allowed no phone calls, no casual chatting and no leftover food." Zhou readily conceded his friend Wang had something of a "hero complex", constantly performing as if his life was a blockbuster film. Wang, a fan of spy movies, made a show of being reluctant to eat food from unknown sources, because of a fear of being poisoned.

His police canteen became a personal refuge and a meeting place for Chongqing's political elite. A few days after Gu Kailai, wife of the fallen Chongqing Party boss Bo Xilai, murdered Englishman Neil Heywood, she assembled police including Wang at his canteen and told him she was on a secret mission from the central Public Security Bureau to protect him. She wore a general's uniform of the People's Liberation Army at the time, even though she held no military or official Communist Party rank, Reuters reported. Weng Zhenjie, a central figure in Chongqing's state-dominated financial system, and also its shadowy underground banking network, lobbied incessantly to meet Wang. Weng smoothed the relationship by donating 100 million yuan to a compensation fund for police who were "injured" in the anti-mafia crackdown, to be administered by Wang.

Eventually, Weng knew he had succeeded when Wang invited him to dine in his canteen, businessman Zhang Mingyu said. Wang drank red wine in a profession where beer and a white spirit called baijiu are the norm. He paid great attention to his attire and appearance, combining professorial glasses with a reputation for belting hooligans in the face and shooting guns into the air while standing on the bonnet of his jeep. He commissioned books - and of course a film - about his crime-fighting exploits. But Zhou said these faults paled into insignificance against the flaws of a corrupt political system that Wang and his patron, Bo, were fighting to fix.

"The ordinary people will miss these guys," says Zhou. "Everyone in China is depressed. Even if we had 100 Obamas it wouldn't change a thing," referring to the US President However, Wang's detractors said Wang and Bo were the distilled essence of China's problems. Whereas Zhou said Wang's fancy police canteens must have been funded by the ministry of finance, lawyer Li Zhuang said they were funded by the assets he stripped from the city's wealthy businessmen after framing them as mobsters. "Billions of assets were confiscated each time he cracked a 'criminal gang'," said Li, who has been investigating and campaigning against Bo and Wang's "fascist tyranny in Chongqing" since the day he was released from jail. "Those assets should [have gone to] the national treasury but instead they were 'digested' at the Public Security Bureau and nobody knows how."

Yesterday, Wang was tried in secret, without any public notification, for allegedly defecting to the United States and bending the law for his personal interests. Loading Today the court is said to be "open", but is effectively closed, as he faces other charges including bribery. Official reports will be closely read for signs that the leadership are setting up a criminal case against Wang's former patron, Bo Xilai.