ORANGE WIG AND LIPSTICK FOUND AT FLAT OF SPY IN BAG GARETH WILLIAMS

The hearing was also told unidentified DNA had been found on the holdall in which the naked body of Gareth Williams was discovered.

Forensic officers found two spots of DNA on the bag, which had been secured with a padlock.

Detective Chief Inspector Jackie Sebire said it would be “very difficult” for Mr Williams to have locked himself in the holdall, which was found in his bath in August 2010.

She told Westminster coroner Dr Fiona Wilcox the bag was zipped up and padlocked, with the keys inside, next to the 31-year-old’s body.

DCI Sebire added that the red North Face holdall was not torn inside and there no marks on Mr Williams’s fingers to suggest he tried to claw his way out.

She said that, had he manoeuvred himself into the bag, there would have been handprints on the bathroom wall – but there were none.

Giving evidence on the second day of the London inquest, she said she was surprised to find his duvet on the floor of the “incredibly tidy” flat.

“My thought or my opinion since I went into the scene is that a third party had been involved in the death or by putting the body in the bag,” she added.

The hearing was given a video tour of the flat in Pimlico, central London, where Mr Williams stayed during his three-year secondment to MI6 from GCHQ intelligence base in Cheltenham.

DCI Sebire talked the coroner through the film, which showed his personal effects and clothes dotted about immaculately-clean rooms.