Diana: In Pursuit of Love (36 page)

They flew from Olbia airport in Dodi’s private jet to Paris, where they were due to spend the night before Diana returned home to be with her sons whom she had not seen for a month. After the peace they had enjoyed adrift at sea, they were plunged into the frenzy their arrival had created. They landed at Paris’s Le Bourget airport where they were greeted by a crowd of paparazzi, and were whisked away by a driver from the Ritz Hotel, owned by Mohamed Fayed. They stopped for a twenty-minute visit to the Windsor château before returning to the car and moving on to the Ritz. During the journey they were surrounded by motorbike riders, with cameramen on board desperately trying to get shots of the couple. As Diana, a veteran of paparazzi lunacy, remarked, ‘Someone is going to get themselves hurt.’

The photographers’ behaviour reflected the febrile excitement that had been brewing like a summer thunderstorm over the last few days. Even as Diana and Dodi wandered round the echoing rooms where a royal couple had spent their days in voluntary exile years before, newspapers in London were about to print stories that suggested a kind of collective derangement. In the
Independent
Diana was described as ‘a woman with fundamentally nothing to say about anything’. She was ‘suffering from a form of arrested development’. ‘Isn’t it time she started using her head?’ asked the
Mail on Sunday
; the
Sunday Mirror
printed a special supplement entitled ‘A Story of Love’, the
News of the World
claimed that William had demanded that Diana should split from Dodi: ‘William can’t help it, he just doesn’t like the man.’ William was
reportedly ‘horrified’ and ‘doesn’t think Mr Fayed is good for his mother’ – or was that just the press projecting their own prejudices? The upmarket
Sunday Times
newspaper, which had first serialized my biography of the Princess, now put her in the psychiatrist’s chair for daring to be wooed by a Muslim. The pop-psychologist Oliver James put Diana ‘On the Couch’, asking why she was so ‘depressed’ and desperate for love. Other tabloids piled in with dire prognostications – about Prince Philip’s hostility to the relationship, Diana’s prospect of exile, and the social ostracism she would face if she married Dodi. The reaction of the British media mirrored that of her butler Paul Burrell – anxious and possessive, consumed with an impotent desire to capture and control her once again. As she had done with the royal family, slowly but surely, finger by finger, Diana had been releasing herself from the constraining grip of the British media who had claimed ersatz ownership of her life and soul. Her attempt to assert herself had merely urged them on. She and her boyfriend were to die that day because a posse of men, spearheaded by the Nazgul of the mass media, the paparazzi, would stop at nothing. Even as she lay dying, they would not take no for an answer.

A day that began sedately and serenely, rapidly began to unravel. It would doubtless have been disconcerting for a woman like Diana, who liked order and routine in her life. From the array of bottles in her bathroom to her immaculately pressed clothes, she liked everything to be neat and tidy, just so. Before royal engagements, her private secretary Patrick Jephson had always been careful to warn her of any last-minute changes of plan, knowing that she did not like surprises. Yet on this day, there seemed to be no plan, the couple zig-zagging across Paris in a manner that was confusing and, surely, for Diana, deeply irritating. They were on Dodi time – improvised and chaotic.

After their brief tour of the Villa Windsor they went on to the Ritz Hotel where they pulled up at the rear service entrance to avoid the media mob waiting at the front. Once installed in the Imperial Suite, Dodi and Diana spent some time on the telephone, calling friends and relations to catch up on all the latest news – and to be asked about their relationship. The Princess made it clear
that while she was very happy, marriage was not on her mind. She was more concerned about William who had called her from Balmoral, worried that he had been asked to appear at a photocall at Eton to mark his third year at the exclusive fee-paying school. As Harry had been held back a year at Ludgrove School, he felt that the staged event would overshadow his brother. Diana promised to discuss it with his father when she returned the following day.

Later that afternoon, while Diana visited the hairdresser, Dodi slipped across Place Vendôme to pick up the £125,000 ‘Tell Me Yes’ ring from Alberto Repossi’s store which he had ordered while they were in Monaco. This gesture excited speculation that he was about to propose to the Princess, perhaps over dinner that evening. As the ring was ordered only a few days into their relationship this scenario seems unlikely, and a crucial witness who further undermines this romantic notion is Dodi’s step-uncle Hassan Yassin. He had just arrived from Los Angeles and was shaving in his suite in the Ritz when Dodi called him and asked him to join him and the Princess for dinner. The urbane Mr Yassin, who has rubbed shoulders with Nelson Mandela, the Sultan of Brunei and various Middle Eastern potentates, politely declined a chance to spend an evening with the world’s most talked about couple, pleading a prior engagement. As he finished shaving he teased his nephew about his new relationship and told him that Diana was a ‘jewel’ that he should not lose. Dodi was emphatic that he was taking the relationship seriously and while the word marriage was never part of the conversation, the notion was there by insinuation.

It is hardly likely, however, that Dodi would have invited his uncle to join them for dinner if he was planning to pop the question. Indeed, Dodi even called Hassan Yassin again later in the evening to insist that if he changed his mind he was welcome to join them. As Hassan Yassin’s plans had not changed, he once again declined but promised to meet them for breakfast – which suggests that it was his understanding that Dodi and Diana had intended to make the Ritz their overnight base. Later, he said sombrely, ‘Of course, now I regret it. I might have been in the car too and I would have told him to slow down. I value life more than having some photographers following me.’

At seven in the evening, the couple left the hotel via the service entrance and drove to Dodi’s luxurious ten-roomed apartment on the Rue Arsène-Houssaye, overlooking the Arc de Triomphe. Outside his apartment, half a dozen paparazzi lay in wait and the couple had to make a dash for the building while Dodi’s bodyguards kept them at bay. At half-past nine, after they had changed, the couple left the apartment for the chic but casual Chez Benoît restaurant, only to discover that the place was overrun with excited paparazzi, some of whom had followed them from the apartment. They hastily changed their plans, heading back to the Ritz where they ran the gauntlet of twenty or so photographers waiting outside the front entrance. Some shoved their cameras just a few inches from Diana’s face, an indignity which infuriated her companion. ‘Dodi was more than upset,’ recalled Kes Wingfield, one of Dodi’s bodyguards. It was now ten o’clock and the girl whose idea of a fun Saturday night was to settle down with a garnished baked potato in front of the TV to watch the hospital soap,
Casualty
, was tired and famished. They entered the hotel’s L’Espadon restaurant and ordered grilled fish and a bottle of Tattinger champagne. Within minutes of sitting down they were on the move again, security guards having identified two fellow diners as possible paparazzi. They turned out to be English tourists, but by then the couple were ensconced in the Imperial Suite enjoying room service.

For a time it seemed that the couple were settled for the evening. Dodi’s bodyguards believed that they had managed to dissuade their anxious boss from running the gauntlet of paparazzi once more, especially as by now around thirty photographers and a swelling crowd of curious onlookers were waiting outside. But, in yet another unexpected change, Dodi consulted with the Princess and decided that they should return to his apartment as their belongings were there. The plan, one which had worked well enough before, was to leave by the back entrance accompanied by one of Dodi’s bodyguards, Trevor Rees-Jones, with the hotel’s acting security chief, Henri Paul, as chauffeur. A decoy vehicle, containing other bodyguards would leave from the front. Shortly before midnight Dodi called his father in London to obtain his
approval for their great escape. Fayed agreed the ruse, telling his son to be careful.

A day that began in a bay of tranquillity was to end in mayhem, the last reel of Diana’s life out of her hands and her control. Later, her friends and her freelance team of drivers-cum-bodyguards independently watched the CCTV footage of her departure from the rear of the Ritz Hotel to glean some clue as to her mood. To the professional watchers, men who had driven her for the last three years, the signs were clear and unambiguous. She was agitated, anxious and on the point of tears. It had been a long day, she had been drinking champagne and she was tired. Her hands and body were tense and she seemed on edge. As one of her drivers said, ‘If this had been us we’d have parked at the end of the street, let her have a cry and dry her eyes, then moved on.’ Her friend Lucia Flecha de Lima agreed with the professional assessment: ‘To me, that film footage of her leaving the Ritz Hotel for the last time says it all; she looks cross and fed up.’

At 12.20 a.m. on 31 August 1997, just before Dodi and Diana slid into the powerful Mercedes S280 for their last journey, Henri Paul, who was not licensed to drive the limousine, taunted photographers: ‘Don’t bother following – you won’t catch us.’ By then he had consumed a lethal cocktail of prescription drugs and alcohol and was three times over France’s legal drink-drive limit. He barrelled out of the Rue Chambron with a posse of photographers in pursuit. Five minutes later, the hired Mercedes hurtled into the thirteenth pillar of the Alma underpass, travelling at between 118 and 155 kilometres per hour (74–97 mph). The horrendous crash was witnessed by Mohamed Medjahdi, a forklift-truck driver, and his horrified girlfriend Souad Moufakkir, who were driving home in his grey Citroën. At first the couple thought the Mercedes was going to smash into them. ‘A murderous piece of junk was coming closer and closer at high speed,’ said Medjahdi, who accelerated hard to escape a collision. Its tyres squealing, the sound magnified in the concrete tunnel, the Mercedes ploughed into the pillar, the front of the car exploding on impact, with pieces of metal flying in all directions. ‘It was like a bomb going off,’ Medjahdi recalled. He has been interviewed several times by police
for an as yet unpublished statement and is adamant that there was no other car or paparazzi involved: ‘I am absolutely convinced, clear and certain that this was a tragedy – but it was an accident.’

Inside the wreckage, Dodi lay dead on the back seat, his blue jeans shredded by metal shards, and his legs at a grotesque angle. In the front, Henri Paul was slumped dead over the steering column, his body pressed against the horn that blared mournfully in the otherwise silent underpass. By his side Trevor Rees-Jones was unconscious, his jaw nearly ripped off and his face crushed by the impact. Only Diana seemed relatively unscathed. The Princess, who, like Dodi, was not wearing a seat belt, had been propelled forward by the force of the impact, coming to rest on the floor with her back to the car door, her body jammed between the front and back seats. She appeared to be semi-conscious, and although a trickle of blood ran out of her left ear and from her nose, she did not seem badly injured. The smear of blood in her hair made it look as though she had tried to brush it from her face with her bloody right hand. While there has long been dispute about her ‘final words’, in her damaged state they will have been brief and incoherent. The first policeman on the scene, Stéphane Dorzée, claims Diana moaned and mumbled ‘My God’, while a fireman said she mumbled, ‘What happened?’ Whatever fragments of speech she uttered, she was certainly not conscious for long.

Within minutes the photographer Romuald Rat and his driver Stéphane Darmon arrived at the scene. Rat pulled open the door and felt Diana’s pulse to see if she was alive. ‘I’m here,’ he said in English, ‘be cool.’ Moments later an off-duty doctor, Frédéric Maillez, stopped to help – it was the third time that he had been the first doctor at the scene of a serious car smash. After surveying the four passengers he raced back to his white Ford Fiesta and pulled out the only piece of medical equipment he had with him, an Ambu – a mask attached to a portable self-inflating oxygen bottle – which he tried to place over Diana’s nose and mouth. By now her head was slumped forward, her eyes open but glassy. The signs looked bad, but as her external injuries appeared slight, Maillez thought she would survive.

But internally Diana had suffered from ‘grave haemorrhagic shock’, which meant, in layman’s terms, that her chest and lung cavity were rapidly filling with blood. The force of the impact had ripped the vital pulmonary artery from her heart – a common cause of fatalities in aircraft crashes. This injury caused her heart to spasm and she suffered several huge heart attacks.

As Diana’s life began to ebb away, the still-smoking Mercedes was by now surrounded by photographers, the doctor’s frantic efforts to resuscitate the Princess illuminated by an explosion of flashlights. ‘It was like a scene out of the annals of Hell,’ recollected Dorzée. By now, in London, newspaper executives, with the first pictures of the stricken Princess on their desks, were waiting for news of her condition. If she lived, the shots went on the front page. If she died these last pictures would never be spoken of again. Or, at least, that is what they hoped.

For the next three hours, a medical team strove to save the Princess and Trevor Rees-Jones. It took until 1.30 a.m. for the fire service to carefully cut both victims from the crushed car. Diana was on artificial respiration, her blood pressure very low and she had already suffered major cardiac arrest. The ambulance, surrounded by a police escort, crawled the 3.8 kilometres to the Pitié-Salpétrière hospital, stopping once while the doctor tried to prevent a second cardiac arrest. It was not until two in the morning that the Princess arrived at the hospital, where two surgeons, Bruno Riou and Dr Alain Pavie, and their team were waiting.