“We can’t keep a lid on this,” China’s disgraced leader Bo Xilai was reportedly told by his police chief when the murder scandal now engulfing Bo’s family first began to unravel.

With a once-in-a-decade leadership handover months away, the Communist Party’s elite must be thinking the same thing as they confront the first very public turmoil at the centre of power in more than 20 years.

Revelations about the former Chongqing party chief issued by the government on Tuesday, and above all that his wife Gu Kailai is suspected of murdering British businessman Neil Heywood, have upset China’s carefully staged power succession, turning it into a drama that could still claim victims.

“We’re all watching a big drama performed by the top level of the party,” said Dai Qing, an investigative writer in Beijing and the adoptive daughter of a People’s Liberation Army marshal. “Act one is over, and we’re…