Betrayed (12 page)

The road was long and hard. Sitting in a moving vehicle allows far too much time for thinking. Memories of how we used to keep the children amused on long road trips. All the times they got tired and bored. How we sometimes used bribery to keep the two of them
from bickering – tiny amounts of money for every minute they didn't
talk. So many small, forgotten memories crept past the barrier I had
tried to build in my mind. Memories of the first time the children
had seen the sea. The first time they were old enough to appreciate
the beauty of nature. The first time they decided they were too old
to come away with us.

With Tracey, memories were all that were left. Some moments we
re
so deep-rooted in our minds that we relived them every day, even
though a whole lifetime of others had left hardly any trace. The
guilt of things said or done in the past now came back to haunt us, although they had long ago been forgiven.

Sunsets and sunrises painted the sky, but day after day was
marred by the pain that had been engraved on our hearts and changed
our lives forever. We walked through forests sheltered from the sun,
surrounded by the gloom and dankness of the forest floor. New
growth was forming wherever a small ray of sunlight penetrated.
Among the dead vegetation the will to survive allowed the tiniest
seeds to throw out new life. But for us there was only death, the bit
ter taste of loss and regret. For a few unthinking moments, distracte
d, we might escape the torment of our daughter's death, but each time
it returned with renewed force. How could we plan and dream when
Tracey's dream-list would forever remain incomplete? I wanted to
sleep. I wanted to escape. The holiday was bringing a little peace, a
little distance, but not all of nature's beauty could be a palliative against pain so raw and consuming.

From the stoep of our cottage I could smell the sea breeze and hear the pounding waves. I was sitting with a book unseen on my lap one
morning when my phone rang, loud and insistent. I tensed, assum
ing it was news about the investigation. But it was Glen, telling me that
my horse Fred had fallen ill and it was uncertain if he would make it through the night.

“I don't want him to suffer,” I said. “Do whatever has to be done to release him from any pain and suffering.”

The next day Glen phoned again to say that the vet had put Fred to sleep early that morning. Death seemed to be stalking me. Fred was only a horse, not my child, but I had loved and cared for him for more than twenty years and I was upset not to be there to hold him in his final moments. Robbed again.

“Tracey's cremation has been scheduled for tomorrow morning,” Glen continued. “Must I postpone it until you get home?”

“No. There have been so many delays already. Just tell them to go
ahead. But since Dad and I can't be there, phone her close friends an
d
ask them if they would like to come. Try to convince Granny to stay at home. I think it'll be very hard on her and there won't be a min
ister at the chapel anyway. And Glen, think very, very hard about
whether you really want to go,” I cautioned. I didn't want him livin
g
with regrets or bad dreams of seeing her coffin pass into the fires
that would render her to ashes.

The day of the cremation in far-away Benoni was overcast to refl
ect
our mood. We watched waves batter the rocks until high tide hid
them under the swirling water. Feelings of betrayal, guilt and dis
loyalty ached inside me because I wasn't there to say a final goodbye.
There was sadness that Glen and my mother had to deal with this
without our support. There was pain and shock that I hadn't been
able to protect Tracey from death. Now I was allowing her earthly remains to be destroyed – and again I wasn't with her, couldn't protect her.

The next morning dawned clear and cool. Over coffee, we were
talking about setting off for a long walk along the beach when my
phone chirped. I pounced on it, thinking again it might be the po
lice with news of the investigation. It was my sister-in-law to tell us
that Buddy's father had died during the night.

I wondered if Tracey's murder had contributed to my father-in-la
w's
ill health and death. Knowing that the pain of Tracey's death had
eclipsed all other feelings for my husband, I was worried that he
would bottle his grief for his father. I tried to get him to open up
about his dad, but he either changed the subject or ignored me. Not wanting to upset him or make him angry, I allowed him this free
dom to handle the death in his own way.

The drive home was an ordeal. The last few days had brought us a small measure of relief from this sad new chapter in our lives, but
the closer we got to home the more we had to acknowledge the dar
kness that filled our lives. We wouldn't be met with excitement and joy by our two children; Glen would be standing alone, his sister's absence filling the homecoming with sadness.

The first thing we had to do when we got home was to arrange
the funeral for my father-in-law, as Buddy's sister had asked us to do. We went to the same funeral home we had used for Tracey and it
was like rewinding a video we hadn't wanted to see the first time.
The arrangements made, we let the rest of the family know the place
, date and time of the funeral, but they said the arrangements didn't suit them. Too tired and upset to argue, Buddy told them to carry on
and make the arrangements themselves and we would cancel ours.
He just asked that they use the same funeral home because he had already paid the costs.

Next on my to-do list was to find out if Dr Kloppers had received
the photographs from Captain Kotze. She hadn't.

“Have you heard anything from the labs yet?” I asked.

“No,” she answered. “Unfortunately, I won't get the results directly
because I handed the samples over to the police.”

Knowing by now that it was pointless for me to try to get informa
tion from Captain Kotze, she gave me a contact name and number at the labs, as well as the name and number of someone at the Supreme Court in the hope that he could pump some urgency into the investigation.

I phoned the labs first and explained the situation. The woman was horrified.

“Why weren't we told the specimens were from a murder victim?”
she asked. “Because the labs are short-staffed and overloaded with
work, it can take months for tests to be done. But if we had been noti
fied that they were from a murder victim, the tests would have been upgraded to a priority case.”

She promised to get back to me – and she did. The tests had been elevated.

This time I was not so much shocked as angry. After six or seven attempts, I finally got hold of Captain Kotze.

“Why weren't the labs notified that the specimens were from a murder victim?” I demanded.

“It makes no difference,” he insisted.

“You don't know what you're talking about. I've just spoken to
the laboratory and they say that the case has now been elevated to a priority case.”

I was also concerned about the rape test kit because I had no way
of tracing what had happened to it. Whereas the other specimens
had gone to a general lab in Johannesburg that I could phone to ask
for progress reports, the rape test had been sent directly to the po
lice labs in Pretoria – and I knew by now that getting the police to com
municate with me was like bashing my head against a wall. It was
becoming increasingly obvious that Tracey's murder had been put
on the back burner by the very people who should have been try
ing to catch her killer.

Frustrated again by Captain Kotze's lies and excuses, I phoned the
Supreme Court and told my tale of woe all over again. The Deputy
Director of Public Prosecutions listened to my story and said he would
do what he could to get the wheels in motion. He agreed that the investigation seemed to have been a non-starter, and asked for a couple of days to make some enquiries and get back to me. My spirits lifted.

He phoned on the day of my father-in-law's funeral to tell me that he had explained my problem to the senior magistrate at the court
in Kempton Park and asked him to intervene on my behalf. He also
gave me some advice on how to proceed, like getting in touch with
the magistrate in Kempton Park, contacting the Police Commissioner
,
what I should expect from the investigating officers in the way of
follow-up information and confirmation of when the housemates had
been interviewed. He even offered to read the docket once the inquest
had been held, and asked me to keep in touch and let him know ho
w things were progressing.

With the second family funeral in just over a month behind us, some semblance of humdrum normality began to seep back into our
fractured lives. Each morning we went to work and each night we
came home to our house of sadness. The biggest stumbling block in
our attempt to achieve some closure about Tracey's death was the indifference of the police and the constant battle to get updates about
the case. Soon after the Deputy Director of Public Prosecutions contacted the magistrate I got one unsolicited phone call from Captain
Kotze, but it didn't take long for everything to slip back into “no co
mmunication” mode.

Over the next few weeks, beleaguered by unanswered questions, I
began to mull over the idea of hiring a private investigator to do what the police should have been doing. The problem was finance. Privat
e
investigators don't come cheap and we weren't a wealthy family. Early in June I was flipping through a magazine when I saw an article about
an unsolved murder. As if it were a sign, the name and telephone num
ber of a private investigator were included in the article. I told Budd
y
I believed it was the road we had to take. Although it was already fair
ly
late in the evening, I phoned the number and spoke to PI Dave
Connor.

“How much do you charge?” I asked as soon as I had introduced myself and told him why I was calling.

“I need to hear the full story. Can we meet to discuss that? Then we can talk about costs afterwards,” he suggested.

“That's fine. When are you free?”

“How about next Sunday at 10.30?”

“Perfect. I'll see you then,” I replied and gave him directions to ou
r house.

The next day I phoned five other private investigators that I found
in the Yellow Pages and through an Internet search, to try to get a feel
of what the financial implications might be. All of them wanted thou
sands of Rands upfront as a deposit, without even knowing what my
problem was. We simply didn't have that kind of money. Of course,
if one of them could have brought my daughter back, I would have
spent every cent I owned, and begged and borrowed the balance, not
caring how much it was. But that would have been like asking for the moon.

2003–2004

March is always a beautiful month. The sun had not yet risen and the air was crisp as I set off to take Tracey to the Elim Clinic in Kempton Park to start her drug rehab journey. I turned the car radio off; the cheeriness of the morning
presenters was setting my teeth on edge. We drove in silence. Although my
heart was heavy with musings about where Buddy and I had gone wrong, I was filled with hope that this would be the turning point in Tracey's life.

Together we signed in at the security gate and walked to the reception
area, Tracey's face all the while a study in apprehension. The walls were a soft cream colour and a vase of pink and white flowers stood on a glass
coffee table. Above our heads was a cross, a hint that the clinic was underpinned by strong Christian values. Dark corridors ran off in various directions
like rabbit warrens. Through one door I could see rose bushes and a beautiful
garden gently lit by the early morning sun.

What I hadn't expected was the silence. No hustle and bustle of people moving around; it was as if Tracey and I were the only ones in the building. She looked so small and helpless. Gone were the false bravado and arro
gance, and all that was left was a forlorn and frightened child. Her eyes
roved around the reception area, filled with anxiety about the unknown.