The Spy in the Bag: The Death That Britain Ruled Two Ways

2026-06-19 · Unexplained Deaths · 8 min read

On the afternoon of 23 August 2010, two police officers let themselves into the top-floor flat at 36 Alderney Street in Pimlico, central London. It was a little before five o'clock. The address was not an ordinary London home. It was a property linked to the Secret Intelligence Service, a discreet base a short walk from the riverside headquarters of MI6, and the man who lived there had not answered his phone or appeared at work for days.

In the small en-suite bathroom, resting in the bath, sat a red North Face holdall. It was zipped shut and secured with a padlock, and the padlock was fastened on the outside. Inside, folded into a space that should never have held a grown man, naked, lay the body of Gareth Williams, thirty-one years old, a mathematician who broke codes for GCHQ and had been seconded to Britain's foreign intelligence service. The single small key that fitted the padlock lay inside the bag, tucked beneath his body.

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