by Tim Clayton
Lana Marks disagrees:
I spoke to Diana about a week before her accident and she told me that she was really enjoying her summer and having a lovely time. And in the second breath she told me that she was so looking forward to getting back to London because she was meeting William and Harry on the Sunday. They had spent time with Charles as part of their vacation and then it was Diana’s turn to be with them. And in fact she had even tried to cut her last vacation with Dodi short by two days. She had asked Paul Burrell [her butler] to try and change the reservations for two days earlier and Dodi had persuaded her to stay. She told me that she was looking forward to catching up with some of her friends that she hadn’t spoken to in the summer. And she just wanted to be back in her own surroundings.
Diana was very subtle. She didn’t spell things out and say, ‘Oh, I’m chucking the fella, I’m over with that now and I’m moving on.’ That wasn’t her style.
18
Paris
* * *
On the morning of 30 August, Kez Wingfield and Trevor Rees-Jones learned that their boss wanted to take the Princess to Paris later that day. The bodyguards had little time to make security arrangements. When they reached Le Bourget airport, they found a dozen photographers lying in wait for them, and they were followed from then on.
They drove to the Windsor villa, where Fayed’s security chief, Ben Murrell, met them. For forty minutes Dodi showed Diana around the house and then they left.
From this point everything is disputed by Mohamed Al Fayed. His initial challenge to the exhaustive two-year official French investigation has been rejected, but his bid to prove that agents of British intelligence killed Diana and his son did uncover the possibility that some staff at the Ritz may have been dealing with intelligence agencies. However intelligence services in every major city keep a close eye on the comings and goings at top hotels, habitually paying staff for information. Security experts point out that the couple’s ever-changing plans gave very little time to set up a complex operation like staging a car accident.
* * *
From the Windsor villa the couple went on to the Ritz. Dodi and Rees-Jones drove the hundred yards around the Place Vendôme to the Repossi showroom and picked up the ring Dodi had ordered for Diana. She, meanwhile, was phoning Richard Kay to tell him that she was blissfully happy, would be retiring from public life in November, but would continue with some charity work. This sounded like another of the semi-retirements Kay had seen twice before. She spoke of setting up a chain of hospices around the world, some funded by Fayed. Kay later said that Diana that evening was the same woman he had met in Nepal in 1993, unsure of herself, in search of approval and understanding. Nevertheless, she was in love and in Paris and looking forward to a swanky evening out.
The couple drove to Dodi’s apartment on the Champs Elysées near the Place Charles de Gaulle. A small army of paparazzi stood outside, and the two bodyguards had to push their way through the crush. As he dressed for dinner, Dodi told his butler René Delorm that he was going to propose to Diana when they returned later that night. Then, changing plan once again, Dodi, Diana and the bodyguards were driven towards a restaurant called Chez Benoît. The bodyguards had no idea what awaited them there. Philippe Dourneau remembers how disconcerted Dodi was as the paparazzi pursued the car. There were motor scooters all around it. Once again he changed his mind and redirected the driver to the Ritz.
Security cameras at the Ritz showed a solemn-looking Diana walking into the hotel followed by Wingfield, then Dodi and Rees-Jones. Once inside, Diana began to cry.
Tension was mounting, fed by the last-minute changes of plans. All of Dodi’s team were now on a hair trigger, tired and frustrated by the changing plans, excited by the press pursuit, pumped up with adrenaline, fearful of a temper outburst from Dodi or his father, who was monitoring the evening closely from London.
Inside the Ritz, Dodi’s perfect romantic evening was coming unstuck. There was an argument, and he blamed the bodyguards for the ‘fuck-up’. Wingfield and Rees-Jones forcefully told him it was his fault for doing everything in such a rush. Everyone calmed down and the couple ordered food to eat upstairs in a suite. As they dined, Henri Paul, deputy head of security at the hotel, was summoned. He joined Wingfield and Rees-Jones in the bar. They later stated that he did not appear to be drunk to them and was drinking what looked like pineapple juice. But their bar bill included two Ricards, a brand of pastis that could perhaps be confused with pineapple juice when diluted with water. Not that there was any reason for the bodyguards to study his intake, because at that point he was not due to drive anyone anywhere. The real chauffeur, Philippe Dourneau, was sitting outside, waiting.
Kez Wingfield went upstairs and stood outside the suite. He heard laughter coming from inside. The evening was back on track. Dodi rang his father, who says he tried to persuade him to sleep in the hotel, but Dodi was keen to get back to his apartment, his luggage and his proposal. He had a plan: a decoy vehicle would leave from the front entrance, taking the bodyguards, while he and Diana left by the back. Henri Paul popped out of the suite to tell Wingfield and Rees-Jones. Paul would drive them and there would be no back-up car. The bodyguards were alarmed; the plan ran contrary to all their security training, which stipulates that guards must accompany VIPs at all times, followed by a back-up vehicle. But Dodi told them his plan had already been approved by his father and their boss. Mohamed Al Fayed denies this, and much else in the bodyguards’ accounts, blaming them for allowing Dodi’s plan to proceed. Whoever had or had not been told of the decoy idea, Dodi agreed to Wingfield’s firm insistence that Rees-Jones would travel with him and Diana.
* * *
Was Paul fit to drive?
None of the so-called conspiracy theories begins to work unless the French autopsy’s conclusion that Henri Paul was drunk is challenged. But at his autopsy five samples were taken, all showing him to be three times over the French legal limit for alcohol in blood at the moment of his death. A second set of samples was then taken on the Thursday after the crash under the personal supervision of investigating Judge Hervé Stéphan. Every step of the process witnessed by Stéphan was photographed. The new results confirmed the old. They also showed the presence of antidepressants, known to slow reactions, drugs that carry written warnings not to combine them with alcohol and not to drive under their influence.
Both bodyguards reported that Paul did not appear drunk immediately before leaving the hotel, but Paul was an experienced drinker, they had not been expecting him to drive, and they were hardly going to admit that they had allowed him to do so while obviously roaring drunk. It might be argued that it was mildly suspicious that Mohamed Al Fayed was refused permission to carry out a second autopsy on Paul or to have any of his blood samples tested privately, but this was a most unusual request.
Some have raised the possibility that the blood could have been switched. But such a thing is far easier to allege than to carry out. To switch Paul’s blood would have required the co-operation of hospital staff, some of whom came in unexpectedly and so could not have been previously ‘squared’. Meanwhile, someone else would have had to prepare the fake sample of exactly the right age and blood group, to match a man who was not even supposed to be driving the car until half an hour before the crash.
It’s overwhelmingly likely that the driver was drunk.
* * *
Henri Paul had already wandered outside the front door of the Ritz to taunt a group of photographers that included Romuald Rat and Pierre Honsfield. Perhaps he was trying to persuade them that a departure from the front was imminent. But several began to think that the couple might use another exit and so some went around the back. At 12.20 a.m. Dodi and Diana emerged. Henri Paul shouted ‘You will never catch us’ at the knot of photographers by the back door.
Paul went the long way round to avoid traffic lights that might have brought photographers alongside the clear glass windows of the Mercedes. He followed a dual carriageway
along the river which tunnelled under major junctions. The second tunnel on his route, cutting under the Place d’Alma, was an accident black spot. There had been thirty-four crashes there in the previous fifteen years, and eight deaths. The problem is a sudden dip and a slight bend to the left. There are no crash barriers between the road and the central concrete pillars.
As he had promised, Paul easily outdistanced the paparazzi by driving at 65 mph in a 30 mph limit. No photos of the car were taken during its journey to the tunnel. Some photographers gave up and went straight to Dodi’s apartment by the direct route. As he entered the tunnel, Paul veered suddenly to the left, travelling at between 74 and 97 mph. The police found no tyre marks caused by braking – the car simply careered into the thirteenth pillar. No one was wearing a seat belt.
* * *
When they checked the Mercedes, the police found traces of paint that they considered to have come from a white Fiat Uno. In response to their appeal, a couple remembered seeing a Uno leave the tunnel, being driven erratically with a dog in the back. But the car was never found. The police did find a Uno owned by a Vietnamese immigrant who had had a dog grille fitted, but he was working that night.
* * *
First on the scene was photographer Romuald Rat, who took photographs of the wreckage. Others did the same. Dodi and Henri Paul had been killed instantly. Rat entered the car and spoke to Diana. ‘Be cool, a doctor is coming,’ he said. Another photographer, Christian Martinez, got into the car to take photos. Rat says that he tried to stop Martinez. Within minutes a doctor called Frédéric Mailliez arrived. He was returning after a night out with friends. There was a terrible noise in the tunnel as the Mercedes’s horn was stuck full on and it was making an echo. Mailliez had worked as an emergency doctor and offered what help he could.
Diana was moaning and semiconscious. Mailliez had no idea who she was. Rees-Jones was alive but looked unlikely to survive fearful head injuries. Mailliez attended to Diana because, in his opinion, she had a better chance. He is adamant that the paparazzi did not get in the way as he tried to help the woman in the car. In fact, if anything, he recalls one of them suggesting that he speak to the woman in English. But some kept on taking pictures of the injured and the dead. Mailliez’s friend Marc Butt had been keeping an eye on the car that they had left parked on the other carriageway. He recalled seeing lots of camera flashlights going off. He also remembers a crowd gathering and arguments breaking out. He didn’t know what this was at the time, but assumes that it must have been between the photographers and members of the public who had stopped to offer help.
Two policemen, Sébastien Dorzee and Lino Gaggliardone, arrived at 12.30 a.m. and had to fight their way through a crowd around the wreckage. Unpublished photographs of the crash show Dodi slumped across the back seat, his leg broken and twisted. Diana is kneeling with her back against the front passenger seat. Gaggliardone remonstrated with the dozen-strong group of photographers who were still taking pictures. One, Martinez, is reported to have said that he was just doing his job. Passers-by shouted at photographers too.
Seven photographers or their drivers were arrested that night, including Rat and Martinez. Gaggliardone was damning in his comments on their behaviour, Mailliez less so. Police developed their film. It appeared that pictures had been taken only after the crash. And so camera flashes were unlikely to have triggered the accident, as many first assumed.
The emergency services arrived soon afterwards. Mailliez estimated that his total involvement lasted no more than fifteen minutes. Once the fully equipped ambulances had arrived he thought it best to leave matters to the doctors who had arrived with them. It was only when he was watching the TV the next morning that he realised who it was that he had treated the night before.
Diana had to be cut free. She was stabilised at the scene by a resuscitation specialist, Dr Jean-Marc Martino. According to Martino, she was agitated and crying out. It took nearly an hour to get her loose, during which time she suffered a heart attack, the result of heavy internal bleeding. The ambulance set off for the La Pitié Salpêtrière hospital at 1.25 a.m. It is normally a ten-minute journey, but this time it took over thirty. The vehicle drove slowly so as not to cause further damage to the patient whose condition was critical.
It has occasionally been alleged that the ambulance did not get Diana to the hospital fast enough. Thierry Meresse, the spokesman for the hospital, explains that such allegations are based on a misunderstanding of French medical practice:
The moment the Princess of Wales was placed in the SAMU ambulance it was as if she already had one foot in the hospital. It isn’t just an ambulance with a stretcher – it’s an actual hospital that goes to the site of the accident. In France, the system is such that the best doctors for resuscitation, the very top specialists in serious road traumas, are actually present in the ambulance.
* * *
News of the crash reached London immediately after it happened. Picture editors were woken by calls from Parisian photo agencies, Ken Lennox among them:
The phone rang and it was a Paris agency, saying there’d been a car crash in Paris. I looked at the time, it was just after twelve o’clock in London. They said that Dodi had been very badly injured but Diana was all right. They thought she had maybe a broken leg. This agency had the photographs and wanted three hundred thousand pounds from the Sun to run them exclusively on the Monday. I said automatically, ‘Yes, we’ll have them. I want to see them. I’m heading towards the office now.’ I arrived at the office with no socks and a T-shirt and a pair of jeans.
Lennox faced a night of excitement, dread and tumbling, troubling memories. This was the girl behind the tree, the clever one with the compact, the girl who’d borrowed his Private Eye and made him cocoa, the one who’d asked him ‘How am I doing, Ken?’ in the Welsh rain. She’d been in a big black car then too. And now here he was, haggling with a French photo agency for a picture of her propped up next to her dead lover. Other calls came into the office, and Lennox soon realised that photographers were going to be blamed, probably the ones he was dealing with on the telephone.
There’s a dreadful finality about a still photograph. It doesn’t go away, it sits there, balefully looking at you.
I felt for the whole thing. I felt ill with the thought of this. I felt guilt and sadness and how brief a life it’d been. And how that she, at the end, couldn’t find that peace that would have let her live a normal life of some kind. But it would never have been normal because no matter what anyone, any editor, said, ‘We will not cover her again’, somebody would have. But I must admit at the time I felt dreadful.
But Lennox still had a job to do.
They sent the first tranche of photographs over – photographs of Diana and Dodi and the driver, etc. I then phoned my editor and I phoned my chairman and I phoned everyone I could think of. I got a friendly photographer in Paris to go straight to the scene. I got Arthur Edwards on a private jet. I got a photographer in Kent to go across on a ferry . . .
* * *
At the Salpêtrière, Thierry Meresse was waiting for the ambulance to arrive. In late August, Paris is empty but for tourists. During the night there was not much more than a skeleton staff at work.
I saw in the darkness the ocean of flashing lights which filled the road leading to the hospital. The Prefect of Police said to me, ‘I am requisitioning your hospital.’ It was as if a head of state were about to come. There were moments of great, great silence throughout the corridors. It was the middle of the night, and it was the evening of a holiday, when half the hospital wasn’t working.
Sami Naïr was assistant to the French Interior Minister, Jean-Pierre Chevènement. He had been on duty that night but in late August there was little going on, and so he had left the office at about half past ten and gone home to have dinner with some Spanish friends. He was phoned with news of an accident that the police thought may have involved Princess Diana. After making absolutely sure that the victim of the crash r
eally was Diana, he phoned Chevènement.
I said to the Minister, ‘I have to go very quickly to the hospital, and you’d better come too.’ I left my friends, there, at my house, and I took my official car. You can switch on a signal to show it’s a police car, so I turned on the signal and I got there very quickly.
I arrived at the Salpêtrière hospital at about ten past one in the morning, and I busied myself preparing for the arrival of both Lady Di and the Minister. The atmosphere was extremely tense – meeting like that in a hospital at one o’clock in the morning, ten past one, with those colours, that yellow light, it was a little surreal.
When the ambulance arrived, I was with the Minister outside. There were only two stretcher-bearers so, the Minister on one side and me on the other, we helped to lift out the body, we pulled the stretcher out. The Princess had a breathing apparatus on her face, she had swellings on her eyes, but she still looked beautiful. Her face was extremely lovely, very fresh, very serene, very young. It was very moving. She had this blond hair which made her look Raphaelesque, and the Minister said to me, ‘She’s beautiful, isn’t she? She’s beautiful.’
She was obviously still breathing. The stretcher-bearers immediately took charge of her and took her very quickly to the resuscitation room, where she was immediately operated on to try to save her.
As Naïr and Chevènement were helping carry the stretcher into the hospital, Meresse was trying to master the switchboard:
The press, the media, the politicians and Mr and Mrs Everybody in Paris, who were listening to the radio, heard that the Princess of Wales has had an accident, that she is in hospital, the Pitié Salpêtrière. Beyond that we communicate nothing. But we have to divert the flux of important people who have only one resource, which is to telephone the hospital. People telephone but to such an extent that the switchboard is blocked.