The Cut-Out

by Jon King

  “I’ve called him several times,” JB was saying as we exited the foyer and made our way along the gravel pathway hugging the back of the building. “For some reason he’s not picking up. It keeps going through to his voicemail. It’s just not like him.”

  “Well, keep trying.”

  We entered through the backstage door.

  Michael’s unexplained absence was bothering me. It seemed to have added a disquieting edge to the evening, made me feel prickly, like an unwanted omen had reared its head and had threatened unpalatable things. I wasn’t in the best of moods as it was, it had to be said; I’d learned earlier that day that Katie wouldn’t be coming to the talk, either, and the news had flattened me. I’m at mum’s, the note had said. I need time to think. The kids are fine. Lunch is in the oven. It felt like I’d been kicked by a very large, very angry mule. Okay, we hadn’t been getting on so well of late; the endless book signings, the media appearances, the public speaking events—they’d been eating up all of my time and more and I hadn’t been giving our relationship the attention I should have been giving it. The same old story. I held my hands up to that. But even so the last thing I’d expected was to arrive home from work at lunchtime and find that Katie had packed a suitcase and moved out, lock-stock, kids and all. I felt like giving up. I felt like walking out of the conference centre this minute and jumping in my car and driving over to Katie’s mum’s and pleading with her to change her mind, to come home, to bring the kids with her. But even if I did, what would I say?

  Sorry babe. This’ll be the last talk I do. The last book I write. The last time I put my work before our marriage. The last time I make lame promises like this one only to break it the very next day.

  No, it would be pointless, I knew. She wouldn’t listen. Why should she? It wasn’t the first time I’d been found guilty of this particular crime and I felt sure Katie wasn’t about to accept that it might be the last, either. And anyway, I was in too deep now. I couldn’t just walk away. I couldn’t just disappear from the conference centre and leave a packed house to sit and stare at an empty stage. And neither, if I was to be honest, could I allow the bastards who’d followed me and harassed me and monitored my every move for the past four years – the same bastards who’d murdered Diana – I couldn’t let them see my weakness and assume they’d got the better of me because of it. My weakness, of course, was my desire to keep my marriage a marriage, keep it a living, breathing thing: a loving thing. I couldn’t let them see that I was prepared to put sentiment before conviction. What a stupid, proud fool.

  And then, of course, there was Michael. I was worried about him. I had this bad feeling. It wasn’t like him to ignore our calls, to duck under the radar without letting us know where he was or why he’d decided not to come. It wasn’t like him at all. By the time JB and I had found our way backstage to the dressing room and I’d thrown on my suit jacket and tie and gathered up my folder containing the guide notes for my talk, fair to say my stress levels were stretching the scale.

  “Packed house again,” Mark said, triumphantly, throwing back the door as he bounded into the dressing room, clearly impressed by the evening’s turnout. He was rubbing his hands enthusiastically. “You ready?”

  “As I’ll ever be,” I said.

  “Where’s Katie?”

  “You tell me.”

  “She’s not coming,” JB told him. “And neither is Prince Michael.” He followed me out of the dressing room.

  Enthusiasm well and truly doused, Mark about turned and followed us both along the short passageway to the auditorium entrance. He didn’t say another word.

  A few moments later JB was on stage, filling the void left by Prince Michael’s absence.

  “Good evening, ladies and gentlemen. We’re here tonight to present evidence that Princes Diana’s death was not an accident, but that she was murdered. In just a few moments I’ll be introducing you to someone with whom I’ve spent the past four years investigating this case and writing this book.” He held up a copy of our new book, in view of all present. “The book the British Government tried to ban.”

  A ripple of anticipation, complete with discernible murmurs, came back from the audience. From the side of the stage I caught JB’s eye—he knew, like I knew, that they held high expectations of us. An anxious look between us then he turned back to face the front and continued with his introductions.

  Meanwhile I stood in the wings and stole a sly glance at the audience.

  As Mark had commented, it was a packed house, I could see that clearly enough. There wasn’t an empty seat anywhere that I could tell. True, over the past weeks and months we’d signed books and given talks the length and breadth of the country, sometimes to as few as thirty or forty people, other times to a hundred or a hundred-and-fifty. This night, though, there were ten times that many—fifteen-hundred absorbed faces fixed intently on the stage, and JB’s introductory speech. It gave the evening a new sense of proportion as I scanned those faces now, feeling their anticipation, their tension, their sense of not knowing quite what to expect. Had these two nobodies, Jon King and John Beveridge, really uncovered evidence that Diana was murdered? Could it really be that the government – the Royal Family – might have ordered her assassination? If not, then who? Their desire to know was almost palpable, and despite having given countless talks just like this one, I felt nervous. More so than usual. I hoped I could give them what they wanted.

  “So without further ado can I ask you please to welcome on stage our main speaker for the evening, Jon King.”

  Anxious applause filled the auditorium as JB turned and handed me the stage, shaking my hand and mouthing Knock ‘em dead as we passed one another, he heading for the wings, me centre-stage. I placed my folder on the rostrum and opened it.

  The audience hushed.

  My heart pounded.

  “On the thirty-first of August, nineteen-ninety-seven,” I began, “Princess Diana, together with Dodi Fayed and Henri Paul, died in a car crash in Paris. The French Inquiry concluded that the crash was a tragic accident, that chauffeur Henri Paul was drunk, that he was driving too fast and that the pursuing pack of paparazzi forced him into making a fatal mistake. Not only was Henri Paul three times over the drink-drive limit, we were told, but his blood also contained twenty-point-seven percent carbon monoxide, an impossibly high level sufficient in any other circumstance to have rendered him unconscious. But of course he wasn’t unconscious. Quite the opposite. CCTV footage obtained from the Ritz Hotel in Paris shows that in the moments leading up to the fateful journey Henri Paul was fully awake and alert, chatting coherently to hotel guests, escorting Diana and Dodi to the waiting car and, at one point, even bending down and tying his shoe lace and then standing up straight again with ease. The actions of a perfectly sober individual. Indeed, I put it to you, ladies and gentlemen, that Henri Paul was not drunk, that the paparazzi did not chase Diana’s Mercedes into the crash tunnel as claimed but that British intelligence agents were at work that night and it was they who chased her into the tunnel and caused her car to crash. Deliberately.” I paused, a calculated pause, long enough for the grit in what I was saying to leave its mark. You could hear a pin drop. Then: “Official claims that Diana died in a drink-drive accident,” I said, “and the spurious assertions made by the authorities in support of these claims, are untrue—all part of the meticulously planned and executed cover-up by MI6 and certain other departments within the British government. You’re being lied to, ladies and gentlemen. And tonight I intend to prove it.”

  As I put our case to the audience – the jury – I tried not to look at any one face in particular for more than a heartbeat. Problem was my heart was in overdrive, beating like an old-school flick show, frame on frame, as if it too was being chased by unseen pursuers. I tried not to let it show.

  Holding up a copy of a report we’d obtained, I said: “In my hand is a report by one of the world’s leading forensic scientists, Peter Vanezis, Regius Professor of Fo
rensic Medicine at Glasgow University. In an independent study, Professor Vanezis, together with his team of three other highly eminent forensic pathologists, analyzed the findings of the French autopsy on Henri Paul and the procedures of the French pathologists in reaching those findings. The report concludes that the blood on which the drink-drive verdict was based could not have belonged to Henri Paul. I repeat: the blood on which the drink-drive verdict was based could not have belonged to Henri Paul. Either by mistake or design, ladies and gentlemen, as the report concludes, the blood sample was switched. The question is, of course, who switched it? And why?”

  As one the audience sucked in a short, sharp breath, and then rustled in their seats, as though unsure they should even entertain such a thought. My task, I knew, was to convince them that they should.

  For the next hour or so I delivered our case and presented our evidence with as much passion and clarity as I was able. Some points aroused more concern than others, drawing further gasps from the increasingly involved audience. Other points were accepted more readily. Of course, to prove beyond doubt that Diana had been murdered was an impossible task, I knew that. To even imagine that as a result of our investigation and the arguments we put forward MI6 might be brought to account in a Court of Law was naïve in the extreme. I knew that, too. But then that’s not what I was here to do. I was here to encourage people to question the facts as known, and to provide them with the ammunition with which to do just that. If I could convince enough people that the official verdict was not only unsafe, but fundamentally flawed; if I could reinforce the already cynical public mood with sufficient faith in its own suspicions about Diana’s death, then we had all the more chance of forcing the government into calling a public inquiry. And that, more than anything else, was my goal.

  For the next hour or so, then, I presented them with the still-unanswered questions and unresolved anomalies an inquiry would be forced to address:

  Why was the fact that Princess Diana was unable to wear her seatbelt ‘because it was jammed’ never investigated by the French Inquiry? Had the seatbelt been fixed deliberately?

  Why was the fact that the Mercedes’ front right tyre had been mysteriously slashed never investigated by the French Inquiry? Did they believe the tyre might have been slashed deliberately?

  Who stole the Mercedes at gunpoint prior to the crash and mysteriously returned it, minus its original EMS computer chip, which controls the steering and traction control? Who replaced the EMS chip?

  Who was driving the white Fiat Uno known to have collided with the Mercedes as it entered the crash tunnel? Why was the Uno never found? Or its driver? Or its passenger?

  Who was riding the high-powered motorbike that overtook the Mercedes as it entered the crash tunnel? Why was this motorbike never found? Or its rider? Or its pillion rider?

  Who was sat astride the second motorbike seen parked broadside across the exit slipway, preventing Henri Paul from turning off the riverside highway and heading up to Dodi’s apartment? Why was this second motorbike never found? Or its rider?

  Who was driving the second Mercedes that tailed Diana’s Mercedes into the crash tunnel and was seen speeding away from the scene immediately after the crash? Why was this Mercedes never found? Or its occupants?

  Who was driving the ‘small dark-coloured hatchback’ car that tailed Diana’s Mercedes into the crash tunnel and was seen speeding away from the scene immediately after the crash? Why was this vehicle never found? Or its occupants?

  Why did the French emergency services take almost two hours to get Diana to a hospital that was only three miles from the crash scene?

  Why was the crash tunnel swept clean, disinfected and reopened within hours of the crash, destroying crucial forensic evidence?

  Why was Diana’s butler, Paul Burrell, ordered to burn Diana’s blood-stained clothes immediately after the crash, destroying crucial forensic evidence?

  Why were all ten CCTV cameras lining the route from the Ritz Hotel to the crash tunnel, including the traffic camera mounted above the tunnel’s entrance, unable to record any of the car chase or the crash itself? Who turned them off? Who disabled them?

  Whose blood sample was stored at the morgue in a vial marked ‘unknown male’? This was the sample on which the drink-drive verdict was based. It was never DNA-tested or formally identified as belonging to Henri Paul. It contained 20.7% carbon monoxide poisoning, the kind of level one might expect in the blood of someone who had just committed suicide by inhaling exhaust fumes in an enclosed space, not from the body of someone who had died in a car crash, instantly, on impact, and was thus unable to breathe in any of the fumes from the crashed car. Four of the world’s leading forensic scientists asked these same questions, and concluded that the sample could not have belonged to Henri Paul. So whose was it?

  And more to the point: who switched the original sample for this bogus one?

  Why, against all standard procedure and in contravention of French law, did senior British diplomat Keith Moss give the order for Diana to be embalmed only hours after her death? Was it to cover up the possibility that she was pregnant? The formaldehyde used in the embalming process corrupted all toxicological tests and thus made it impossible to tell. Who instructed Keith Moss to make this decision? Was it his bosses back at MI6?

  Why did London’s two most senior police officers, Metropolitan Police Commissioner Sir Paul Condon and Assistant Commissioner Sir David Vaness, conspire to withhold vital evidence from the French Inquiry, evidence entrusted in them by Diana’s lawyer, Lord Victor Mishcon? Was it to perpetuate the cover-up already in full flow?

  Why did the French Inquiry fail to investigate Henri Paul’s connections to British and French intelligence? Why did they not investigate Henri Paul’s fortune of £170,000 stashed in multiple bank accounts, £43,000 of which he’d deposited in the final eight months of his life and all of which he’d deposited in cash? Henri Paul’s annual salary was £20,500—why did they fail to investigate where this money had come from? Was it because they knew the money had been paid to him by his intelligence handlers for ‘services rendered’, and that to reveal this would have blown his cover as a British and French intelligence agent?

  Why did the French Inquiry fail to investigate the evidence given by former MI6 officer, Richard Tomlinson? Why did French intelligence agents try to prevent Tomlinson giving evidence in the first place by threatening him and beating him up? Did they fear what he might reveal?

  And what of French paparazzo, James Andanson?

  Why did the French police let Andanson off the hook on the strength of such a flimsy alibi?

  Why was Andanson not questioned about his presence in the crash tunnel—about the fact that he’d boasted to friends that he was indeed in Paris on the night of the crash, that he was in the crash tunnel and that he witnessed and photographed the immediate aftermath?

  Why was James Andanson found dead in his burnt-out car, 400 miles from where he was supposed to be? Was it to silence him? Was James Andanson murdered?

  Why, following his death, was Andanson’s office at the SIPA press agency in Paris broken into by an armed gang? To recover the compromising photographs he’d taken in the tunnel immediately after the crash?

  Did these photographs include evidence of MI6 involvement in Diana’s death?

  Did James Andanson work for MI6?

  Why were none of these points investigated by the French Inquiry?

  And there were other points, too, some more significant than others, some more observable than others, more provable even. When pieced together, I proposed to an all-attentive audience, these points formed the matrix of perhaps the biggest and most far-reaching conspiracy of the twentieth century.

  “Only a public inquiry can unravel this conspiracy,” I put to the swarm of wide-awake eyes fixing me as I wrapped up the first half of my talk. “Please sign our petition and help us force the government’s hand. Thank you.”

  A few minutes later my own hand
was wrapped around a polystyrene cup steaming with the hot black coffee I’d just purchased from the backstage vending machine. It was interlude time; I’d just concluded the first half of my talk and I was making my way through the crowded foyer with Mark and JB. I wanted to check in on Jackie, who was still tirelessly manning our book stall, see if she needed any help. No doubt due to the adrenaline still coursing my veins my mood had taken an upward swing since we’d first arrived—the talk was going well, audience reception was good, and to judge by the jostle of interested punters milling around the stall, the book was selling well, too. Jackie was inundated.

  “Looks like we need to give Jacks a hand,” Mark said, and peeled off, squeezing his way through the mass of shuffling bodies over towards the book stall.

  I turned to follow after him, one arm out in front of me to fend off the mass of bodies and prevent my coffee from spilling on them. Or me. Before I’d managed to turn all the way around, however, to take even the first tentative step, I saw something – or someone – that stopped me in my tracks. In that instant every light in my head went out, simultaneously.

  I froze.

  For a beat I simply stood there, rooted, my eyes disbelieving, my mind turning somersaults as manically it strove to keep the panic I was suddenly experiencing on the inside. It seemed like my heart had stopped beating and my chest was caving in. For sure my lungs had stopped pumping breath. Over by the entrance, through what suddenly seemed like a swirling mass of strangely shaped bodies congealing there in the middle of the foyer, I’d just spotted someone I never imagined I would ever see again: someone I’d last seen some four years previously, on a Saturday, at Avebury Stone Circles, a week before Diana’s death. On that occasion this someone had given me nightmares, my dizzying mind recalled, and it felt like those same nightmares were resurfacing in me now, spontaneously, bubbling up from some unfathomed depth like cold spectres. I could scarcely believe who I was looking at.