The Mammoth Book of New Csi (44 page)

The tyre treads were in very good condition and had no abnormal wear. This indicated that there was no serious misalignment of any suspension components immediately before impact with the pillar. The condition of the tyre treads was also consistent with the limited skid marks found at the scene of the crash.

The engine had taken the brunt of the impact and had shattered. Examining the pieces, Price found no signs of engine seizure, which could have contributed to the crash. The French technical experts dismantled the gear box and concluded that the only damage present had resulted from the crash. It was not possible to establish which gear the car was in when the crash occurred.

Although the steering had been badly damaged in the collision, there was no indication that it had malfunctioned beforehand. Damage to the steering wheel and column indicated that it was turned about ninety degrees to the right from the straight-ahead position at the moment of impact. This would have resulted in the steered wheel being turned to the right by about seven degrees because of the steering ratio.

The wheel left alloy rub marks on the edge of the kerb. There was no abnormal wear on the tyres indicating that the wheels were misaligned. However, in October 1996, shortly after the Mercedes was purchased, the owner reported its poor handling to the dealer. It was checked by the dealer, who found nothing wrong, and returned it. The car was stolen in April 1997. When it was recovered, minor repairs were made. The steering geometry and wheel alignment were checked and minor adjustments were made. No further reports of unsatisfactory handling were made.

The headlights had been dipped at the time of the crash and photographs of the vehicle showed that the brake lights remained illuminated. There was no evidence that there had been anything attached to the car that would have affected its control. No signs of adhesive or drilled holes were found. And there was no unusual wiring, other than that for a telephone system that had been fitted at the request of the owners, Etoile Limousines. Indeed, nothing considered likely to have affected the control of the car during the run-up to the crash was discovered. Price found no anomalies or points of interest in his examination of any of the other components of the car and there was no sign of interference with the vehicle.

The car was not one that Diana and Dodi had used before. They had two other vehicles on hand when they left the Ritz hotel that night to return to Dodi’s apartment in Rue Arsène Houssaye, just off the Avenue des Champs-Élysées, near the Arc de Triomphe. However, Philippe Dourneau, Dodi al-Fayed’s regular chauffeur in Paris, accompanied by Kieran Wingfield, had left in the Mercedes Dodi and Diana had arrived in from the front of the Ritz, followed by Jean-François Musa in the backup Range Rover, in an attempt to draw off the paparazzi. A second Mercedes S280 was called to the back of the Ritz in the Rue Cambon.

At 12.20 a.m., Diana and Dodi left in the back of this car. Trevor Rees-Jones was the front-seat passenger. Henri Paul, the head of security at the Ritz, had been seconded as driver. This was not his usual job, but he had been on at least four driving courses in Germany run by Daimler-Benz, where he was taught anti-hijacking procedures and how to force another vehicle off the road. Friends said he drove slowly and carefully. He had gone for a medical for his pilot’s licence a week before he died and there was no sign that he drank excessively. But when his flat was searched, the police found a cupboard containing various aperitifs – Crème de Cassis, Ricard, Suze, port – which had been partly drunk. There were also unopened bottles of beer, red wine and champagne.

On a table in the lobby there were several unopened aperitifs bottles – Martini Bianco, Vodka, Pinot, Suze and fortified wine. In the refrigerator there was one bottle of champagne and two small bottles of beer. And in the kitchen cupboard there were opened bottles of Ricard, Bourbon and Martini Bianco. His doctor had prescribed the anti-depressant Prozac, Noctamide to treat his insomnia, Tiapridal to prevent him dwelling on his personal problems, and Aotal, also known as Acamprosate, which causes a dislike of alcohol. He took Tiapridal and Aotal when he was working to prevent him drinking. On certain occasions, when Paul was freed from his professional constraints, or when he was on holiday, he did not take this medication and drank alcohol in reasonable quantities, though always in a social context. His doctor permitted this as he did not have the clinical signs of being an alcoholic. However, these drugs were prescribed because Paul feared he might be dependent on alcohol. Other prescription drugs were found in his apartment.

At the time of his death, Paul was found to have been carrying 12,645 French francs in cash, which was worth about £1,254. This did not appear to have been withdrawn from any of his bank accounts. In all, he had approximately 1,245,000 francs (£124,500) in fifteen bank accounts, along with shares worth 431,485 francs (£43,148), and had deposited 430,000 francs (£43,000) in the last eight months of his life. Mohamed al-Fayed claims that this is evidence that he was in the pay of MI6. However, Claude Garrec, Henri Paul’s closest friend, said that it was commonplace for him to have large sums of money because of the services he provided for wealthy clients at the Ritz. His parents said that their son received tips of 5,000 francs (£500) from customers. Garrec said that Paul received tips of anything from 1,000 francs (£100) to 10,000 francs (£1,000) – “the sums were limitless, depending on what help or services Henri Paul organized,” he said. These tips were always paid in cash. Asked about the cash he had on him at the time of his death, Garrec said: “I can say that I had seen him with larger sums on previous occasions. He told me that he needed to have cash at his disposal to assist Ritz clients and VIPs, as he was often required to pay upfront for services or purchases that they had asked him to make. Henri Paul told me that rich people never had money on them. He would be reimbursed by the Ritz, which would bill the client.”

In his evidence to Judge Hervé Stéphan, the examining magistrate who headed the French investigation, ex-MI6-man Richard Tomlinson said: “I should point out that it is very common for national security services to try and recruit members of security staff in the big hotels as they are very well placed to pick up information . . . I should explain that only MI6, Mossad and the CIA pay their informants, unlike other countries, including France, who would never pay such sums to their informants. The French intelligence services can pay foreign informants, but not French nationals, and not that much money.”

Henri Paul was born in Brittany and was a French national.

In the computerized telephone book in Paul’s office and the hard copy he kept at home were the names of police stations, police officers and names and telephone numbers for two people with the letters DST next to them. DST stands for
La Direction de la Surveillance du Territoire
, the organization that deals with espionage, terrorism, the protection of the French economy, serious and organized crime, and the non-proliferation of nuclear, biological and chemical weapons. However, according to the records of calls from his home phone and his mobile from midday on Saturday, 30 August 1997, to 12.30 a.m. on Sunday, 31 August, he did not call the numbers associated with the DST.

According to investigative journalist Gerald Posner, citing a source in the United States’ National Security Agency, Henri Paul had a meeting with a member of France’s
Direction Générale de la Securité Extérieure
, or DGSE – the equivalent of Britain’s Secret Intelligence Service (SIS), commonly known as MI6 – on the night of the accident. He was a paid informant who passed information on important guests, particularly foreign diplomats, at the Ritz. But the meeting that night did not concern the Princess of Wales.

“I was told the subject did come up but only in general conversation,” said Posner. “It was pure coincidence that this meeting took place on the same day as the crash occurred.”

Posner also said that Paul was paid 12,560 francs.

The DGSE denied all knowledge of Henri Paul. But was he working for MI6? Richard Tomlinson told Judge Stéphan: ‘I cannot say for sure that it was Henri Paul but I am positive that it was a Frenchman working in the security department of the Ritz Hotel. I am certain that this money originated from MI6. This is speculation on my part, but if he was an MI6 informant, it would be quite normal for him to receive money.”

Tomlinson said that two experienced SIS officers, who knew Henri Paul, arrived in Paris shortly before 31 August 1997 and “most probably met Monsieur Paul shortly before his death”, Tomlinson said in a sworn statement to Judge Stéphan. One of them was Richard Spearman, who had been the personal secretary to the Chief of MI6, David Spedding, before he was posted to Paris the month before the accident. The British Diplomatic Service List did show that “Mr R. D. Spearman” had been posted to the British Embassy in Paris as “First Secretary (Political)”, arriving in his post on 26 August. However, records showed that he had applied for the post in the autumn of 1996 and he had begun pre-post training, including taking French lessons, in May 1997, before Dodi joined Diana and his father in St Tropez for a holiday in July 1997. He also arrived in Paris before anyone outside Mohamed al-Fayed’s organization knew that Diana and Dodi would be in Paris on the weekend of 30 August. That Saturday was, coincidentally, Spearman’s birthday and he went out to dinner with his wife.

The other SIS officer Tomlinson named was Nicholas Langman. He was on leave in Britain that weekend. Officers from Operation Paget obtained corroborating statements from the relatives with whom he was staying. Both Spearman and Langman said that they had never knowingly met or communicated with Henri Paul at any time, either socially or professionally. On a second visit to Tomlinson, the officers from Operation Paget said that he did not know where Spearman and Langman were that weekend and never said he did. He merely thought their movements were suspicious, but later accepted that “these suspicions would appear to be unfounded”.

Tomlinson said that a plan to assassinate Princess Diana had been drawn up by MI6. He told Judge Stéphan: “The plan was fully typed, and attached to a yellow minute board, signifying this was a formal and accountable document. It will therefore still be in existence.”

He also told Judge Stéphan: “MI6 are frequently and routinely asked by the royal household (usually via the Foreign Office) to provide intelligence on potential threats to members of the royal family whilst on overseas trips. This service would frequently extend to asking friendly intelligence services (such as the CIA) to place members of the royal family under discrete surveillance, ostensibly for their own protection.”

And, according to Tomlinson, “one of the ‘paparazzi’ photographers who routinely followed the Princess of Wales was a member of ‘UKN’, a small corps of part-time MI6 agents who provide miscellaneous services to MI6 such as surveillance and photography expertise”.

SIS officers stationed in Paris who were interviewed by investigators with Operation Paget said that no SIS officers knew that Diana and Dodi were in Paris that night until after the crash. Most SIS officers were on leave at the time as business in Paris closes down in August. No SIS officer knowingly met or communicated with Henri Paul, and no SIS officer had the use of a white Fiat Uno like the one seen in the tunnel at the time of the accident.

Officers from Operation Paget met the SIS IT systems controller and searched the service’s database. According to Lord Steven’s report: “The searches showed no trace on any intelligence or informant database of Henri Paul, or any codename or description fitting or apparently referring to Henri Paul or someone in his position at the Ritz hotel before the crash in August 1997. Records were checked back to 1990.”

They also checked all the telegrams that passed between the SIS station in Paris and their headquarters in London between 14 July 1997, when Dodi arrived in St Tropez, and 14 September, two weeks after the crash. The telegrams had numbers that were generated automatically and the sequence between those two dates was complete. They found no reference to Henri Paul or anything relating to the crash.

Officers from Operation Paget made a further search for references to Paul in later telegrams. One reference was found. Dated 18 November 1997, some two and a half months after the crash, the telegram sent from the SIS station in Paris to London Headquarters said: “The Ritz Hotel still crawling with members of the Brigade Criminel [
sic
] of the Police Judiciaire investigating the Princess of Wales’ death,” and added a comment: “Presumably as Head of Security there Henri Paul had been a contact of DST and they would have such a capacity again.”

Plainly, the SIS station in Paris did not know Henri Paul before the crash and did not expect their headquarters in London to know him. Nevertheless, Tomlinson insisted that he had seen an operational file detailing Henri Paul’s involvement with Operation Battle, an attempt to recover hi-tech weapons from the former Soviet Union, in 1992. Meetings took place in the Ritz hotel. Officers from Operation Paget gained access to the file, but could find no reference to the Ritz or anyone who could be identified as Henri Paul.

It appears that Henri Paul only knew of the visit of Diana and Dodi on 29 August and, with other members of staff, made arrangements to greet them the following day. However, his boss, Franz Klein, who was in day-to-day control of the Ritz, knew ten days beforehand that Dodi and his “girlfriend” would be visiting Paris at the end of the month.

On the morning of 30 August, Paul played tennis with his friend Claude Garrec, driving through the Alma tunnel on the way to the court. Afterwards they went to the Café Pelican near Paul’s apartment for a drink. While Garrec had a beer, Paul drank cola. Paul was not meant to have been on duty that weekend, but he told his girlfriend Badia Mouhib on the telephone that he could not see her that evening. Later, he was seen leaving his flat in the company of a young blonde woman. After the crash, a young blonde woman, aged about twenty-five, turned up at the Ritz asking for “Monsieur Henri”. Paul’s parents also said a young blonde woman who gave her name as Françoise turned up at Paul’s flat in the days following the accident asking for something by which to remember him.