Can Diana be laid to rest?

There is a corner on the Place de L'Alma where tourist coaches always pause, close to a huge golden flame rising from a plinth of black marble. Often the sculpture is bedecked with flowers and cards, sometimes on a still night candles burn.

This place is a shrine to Princess Diana, a memorial of the kind many people in Britain have wanted for years - and after yesterday's decision to choose a design for a Diana memorial in Hyde Park, may finally get.

On the sightseeing buses, the guides describe the golden flame as an eternal symbol to the memory of the English princess. Alas, that is not the case.

It might be thought that now, in the month of the fifth anniversary of her death, the chaos that attended so much of Diana's life must finally be at an end. But the sculpture in the Place de L'Alma could easily be a metaphor for an unquiet death. For the golden flame has nothing to do with Diana. It was placed there to commemorate, of all things, the centenary of a newspaper and, while some might savour the irony of this, others find it rather sad.

Indeed, the confusion over the sculpture at the place where Diana was fatally injured seems to be yet another manifestation of the lack of quietude that followed her death. Even now there is controversy over the Hyde Park memorial, which will probably not meet the Government's deadline; there is another round of court action in France; and in Britain - after years of wrangling over whether an inquest on Diana should be held - it is now expected that the coroner to the royal household will announce one next year.

In Paris the authorities have grown impatient with those who believe the golden flame is a shrine to Diana. Flowers and messages left at its base are swept away and, as the anniversary of her death approached, steel barriers were placed around the plinth. This week a steady stream of people from many countries came to see the "Diana memorial".

Among them were John and Mary Harrison, with their 16-year-old daughter Rachel. The family, from Liverpool, is on holiday in Paris and they were appalled to learn that the shrine they'd been told about on the Place de L'Alma is, in fact, nothing of the sort. There is nothing in the square to commemorate the death of the Princess but last year the city of Paris dedicated a small garden to Diana - it is tucked away in a school across town, little-known and only open to visitors at certain times.

"It's as if they didn't want us to remember," Mary Harrison said. "I think it's very sad. She was a person people admired and loved. Surely there should be something here, as a mark of respect?"

These sentiments have been expressed often about matters closer to home, and it does seem strange that five years on there is still such difficulty and unease over the business of remembering Diana. A few hours after she was declared dead, at 4am on 1 September 1997, people began arriving at the Place de L'Alma. All that was known at that time was that the car in which the Princess had been travelling with Dodi Fayed had crashed in the tunnel that runs under the square.

The little garden over the entrance to the underpass was soon filled with bouquets, fluffy toys and messages. Some people wept openly, others stared in disbelief at the line of tyre marks that snaked towards a concrete wall and then into the dark opening of the tunnel. It was impossible not to share the feeling of desolate incomprehension that gripped that small gathering.

Standing with those people in the brilliant sunshine of a perfect early autumn day it seemed unimaginable that Diana was dead, let alone that she had died in such a way.

People kept asking: how could it happen? Even now, that question persists. She had dined with Dodi at the Ritz - the hotel owned by his father, Mohamed Fayed, the proprietor of Harrods. The couple had been pursued by paparazzi photographers since their arrival in Paris the previous day and, when they left the Ritz for Dodi's apartment near the Arc de Triomphe, the cameramen again gave chase. The next part of the story is told in detail in the 6,000 pages of evidence heard by Judge Hervè Stèphan, the man who carried out the investigation into Diana's death.

Dodi tried to throw the paparazzi off their trail by sending his Range Rover away from the Ritz as a decoy. It didn't work. When he and the Princess left by a back route in a rented Mercedes, at least nine photographers, most on motorcycles, pursued them.

As they headed for Dodi's flat their driver Henri Paul tried to outrun the paparazzi. Judge Stèphan's report records that the Mercedes was travelling at not less than 74mph and probably closer to 100mph as it approached the tunnel.

Retracing that last journey now, one shudders to think of trying to negotiate the tunnel at such speeds. My driver said that to try to enter the tunnel at anything close to even 74mph was suicidal. He explained there was a sharp dip in the road just as the tunnel wall turned left: "If you go too fast the car will take off and you've got no control," he said.

Diana's car did indeed fail to make that left turn and the first impact was on the tunnel wall just after the dip. The Mercedes then bounced across the road into a pillar supporting the roof. This concrete column, number 13 in a long row, is massively strong and it stopped the car almost dead. At the moment the Mercedes was brought to a halt its speed was estimated at between 60 and 68mph.

It was an explosive impact. Dodi and Henri Paul were killed instantly. Dodi's bodyguard, Trevor Rees-Jones, was badly hurt but would recover. Princess Diana lay in the back of the car with serious internal injures, including a ruptured pulmonary vein. She was declared dead just over three hours later after emergency surgery failed to save her.

The scars of the collision are still there on that 13th pillar and it seems shocking that an ugly, gouged piece of concrete should be the only testament to what happened there. Even more surprising is the fact that no attempt has been made to make the tunnel more safe. It was noted after the crash that a simple horizontal steel barrier running between the columns would have prevented the kind of head-on crash that killed Diana. Since the tunnel opened in 1956 eight people have been killed in collisions with the concrete columns. But there are no plans to erect a protective barrier.

A spokesman at the British Embassy in Paris said it was the "sovereign decision" of the French authorities to leave the tunnel as it was.

After a two-year investigation, at which 200 witnesses gave evidence, Judge Stèphan finally ruled that the crash was caused by Henri Paul driving too fast while under the influence of alcohol and drugs. Paul, he concluded, had been drinking and the alcohol acting with drugs he had been taking, including Prozac, had impaired his ability to control the car. That finding is about to be challenged.

Mohamed Fayed never accepted the judge's version of events. He launched his own investigation into the crash in the Pont de L'Alma tunnel and his conclusions were very different from those of Judge Stèphan. Mr Fayed believes Diana was probably pregnant with Dodi's child and that the couple were planning to marry. It is his contention that they were assassinated by the British Secret Service because the establishment could not contemplate such a union.

His thesis has been ridiculed and his allegations dismissed to the wilder shores of conspiracy theory. But Mr Fayed will not give up, and his latest efforts to prove he is right guarantee there will be no quietude over Diana's death, possibly for years to come.

Mr Fayed is supporting a court action launched by Henri Paul's parents. Lawyers acting for Jean and Giselle Paul, who live in Lorient in Britanny, are challenging the finding that Henri Paul was drunk. They are demanding an investigation into blood samples said to have been taken from his body.

The issue of whether Paul was indeed drunk has never been entirely straightforward. Although the forensic evidence showed he was far above the legal limit for driving, most witnesses said that on the night of the crash there was nothing in his behaviour to suggest he was intoxicated.

Mr Fayed's spokesman, Chester Stern, said: " The samples that were tested showed an incredibly high presence of carbon monoxide. Expert advice said he would have been comatose with such a level in his blood. There was never any opportunity to challenge the pathologist about this.

"The legal action is being brought by Mr and Mrs Paul to enable individual experts to examine, for the first time, that forensic evidence."

Mr Fayed has developed a theory that the samples may have been taken from another body. His lawyers have asked whether, among the 23 bodies in the mortuary on the night of the crash, there was the body of a person who had committed suicide by breathing car exhaust fumes. This causes death by carbon monoxide poisoning. So far, no answer has been received from the French authorities.

Even if this case in France is dispensed with speedily it will still not be possible to finally draw a line under Diana's death. It is now expected that an inquest into her death will be held in London next year.

Under British law, inquests are held when the body of a British subject is repatriated for burial. But the former coroner to the royal household, Dr John Burton, was always reluctant to hold one for the Princess of Wales. He argued that the French investigation made an inquest superfluous and it was always thought that he did not want to put Diana's family through the ordeal of yet another airing of the events of that tragic night.

But now, with the appointment of a new royal coroner, Michael Burgess, thinking has changed. Mr Burgess is believed to be considering an inquest to be held next year in an attempt to settle, once and for all, the matter of Diana's death.

Mr Fayed sees the prospect of an inquest as an opportunity at last to pursue his theories in the context of a courtroom. His lawyers have written to Mr Burgess, asking for the inquest to be held before a jury, with witnesses who will face cross-examination. This request will almost certainly be denied.

Inquests into the death of a member of the royal family are held in accordance with long-established custom. The hearing must take place in "part of the royal household", in practice, St James's Palace. If there is a jury it is drawn from individuals among the royal staff. Such an arrangement will not satisfy Mr Fayed and is unlikely to quell his demands for an open investigation with the opportunity of questioning witnesses. More legal moves cannot be ruled out.

Diana's death was a cataclysmic episode and it was inevitable there would be an aftermath. Yet who, five years ago, could have foreseen the tortuous path on which we still struggle towards a serene ending to the story of Diana, Princess of Wales?