Betrayed (14 page)

Connor asked us to set up a meeting between him, Buddy and me,
Captain Kotze and Senior-Superintendent Luyt. It took place on a frosty,
mid-winter's morning, an icy wind howling through the streets.
Buddy stuck his hands deep in his pockets and I tried to warm mine under my armpits.

The corridors were dark and dingy, some of the offices closed off by dark brown doors with faded nameplates. People rushed up and
down, shoes ringing loudly on the uncarpeted floors. An electric
heater glowed in the office designated as our meeting room, but made
little headway against the chill air. Dirty windows were tightly shut.
We sat on old wooden chairs scarred with years of use, the shabby
cushions doing little to make us feel welcome.

Senior-Superintendent Luyt introduced himself to everyone, then turned to me. “And
you
I know,” he said, with barely concealed irri
tation, my earlier interruption of his weekend obviously still fresh in
his mind all these months later. “I have other commitments right now
,
so you're going to have to have your meeting with my second in com
mand.” He introduced a short, slim man, conservatively dressed and
with neatly combed hair. He shook hands firmly, and off went the
Senior-Superintendent.

Although the meeting was kept very low-key, you could have cut
the tension with a knife. No one seemed to know what to do. With sidelong glances at Buddy and Connor, I broke the ice by repeating
why we had wanted the meeting. Shuffling in the uncomfortable
chairs
, people shifted from balancing on the edge of their seats to
leaning back with their arms tightly folded. Captain Kotze's eyes
didn't meet mine. When we asked why the police hadn't done certain things like interviewing the housemates – the police officers would look at each other tensely, each waiting for the other to respond. There were a few crushing silences.

Connor shared his findings with Captain Kotze and voiced his concerns about Wally in Cape Town.

“First, this guy says he watched her leave that night but we've
proved that it was too dark,” Connor began. “Also, the other house
mate Trudy insists that Tracey never went out alone at night, and
always woke her and told her if she was going out. The cottage keys
are missing, his black tool bag is missing, but Wally's never asked
about it. Geez, there are so many inconsistencies. Also, he can't ex
plain why the tracksuit pants he was wearing when he woke the next
morning were a different colour from the ones he was wearing the previous night. And he can't explain why he let Tracey take the car when, as he claims, there was no petrol in it. Something just doesn't add up. It all smells a little fishy to me,” he said. “In fact, I'm willing to fly back to Cape Town to do a polygraph test at my own expense.”

The police would have none of it.

“No, no, you don't need to do that. We can either bring him back to
Joburg or get someone from Cape Town to get a statement from him. We can get it done in three days.”

Connor's forensics team had examined Tracey's car thoroughly, including the boot, which Glen and I hadn't searched in those first few
days when Tracey was missing and we were just looking for clues to help find her. At the end of the meeting, he handed the items they had found to Captain Kotze. These included items of men's clothing in a plastic bag, another Zimbabwe bird, a cut brown-and-white ny
lon rope, and more papers with phone numbers written on them, not
in Tracey's handwriting. The Captain showed little interest in any of
this, didn't look into the bags or ask any questions about them.
Connor also gave Kotze the list of questions we had compiled for the police to answer.

“I never give up on a case,” Captain Kotze assured us as we got up to
leave. “You can ask any one of my colleagues about my commitment
to my duties. I promise I'll have answers to your questions within a
week.”

“Yes, well,” I muttered later to Connor, “it's all very fine to get as
surances that they'll follow up on your information, but I've heard
all that so many times before it's hard for me to believe.”

“We'll have to wait and see,” he said.

Still on a mission to get results and justice for my daughter, I sent a letter of complaint to the legal department of the Health Professions
Council of South Africa. I outlined my concerns about the uncertainty
hovering over the cause of death and the fact that the state doctor
hadn't
even conducted a post-mortem on a murder victim. I received
a prompt reply saying that due to a heavy workload it could take a
few months for the matter to come under review. I'd almost become used to the waiting.

My days settled into a routine of going to work and making tele
phone calls to the laboratories and Captain Kotze. Connor phoned every
day to tell me what he and his investigators were doing. What a pleasure – one person I didn't have to nag.

He asked me to set up a meeting with Dr Kloppers. On the appoint
ed day he and I set off together in my car. We battled to find her of
fices in the centre of Johannesburg, which I don't know well. Where
was this place? Round and round we went in frustration. At last we
found the building, but I couldn't see a way to reach the parking lot.
I was so afraid we would be late that I clamped my jaw and drove the
wrong way down a one-way street. This caused some consternation,
not to mention shaken fists and other hand signs from motorists. Later,
when the panic was over, Connor laughed and teased me.

“Typical woman driver, doesn't know how to drive. We'll know
when we hit another vehicle by the noise. Where did you buy your
driver's licence?” he chuckled.

Dr Kloppers was worried about me sitting in on the meeting.

“Some of the things we'll be discussing will be very unsettling,” sh
e explained gently. “Are you sure you wouldn't rather wait outside?”

“No, it's fine. I'd rather stay and if things get too harsh I'll excuse myself,” I replied.

The meeting answered many of our questions as to why the time
of death couldn't be established. With her long experience as a patho
l
ogist and her years of working with drug-related deaths, Dr Kloppers
explained how it may well have been a cover-up for a drug-related
death. She went into some detail about how far drug users would go to cover up a death so that they don't get “discovered” as drug users.

“With the mortuaries being overcrowded and the cooling units under pressure so not operating at the right temperature, the additional
time in the mortuary caused further decomposition, so I wasn't able to establish the time of death,” she explained.

She also talked about the cause of death and clarified why she didn'
t think Tracey had been strangled, despite the presence of the rope.

“The small bone in the neck wasn't broken, which is normally the
case in strangulation, but I can't rule out suffocation,” she said. “Un
fortunately, because of the decomposition, I couldn't establish whether
or not there was any bruising.”

She also stressed that in most murder cases, the perpetrator was
someone related or known to the victim.

“I don't believe Tracey was killed by a stranger, but by someone she knew and trusted.”

It was brutal listening to the particulars of the pathologist's find
ings and the disturbing details of the state of Tracey's body. I tried to
turn away from the fact that it was my daughter's body being dis
cussed, tried to listen in a clinical rather than a personal way. It seemed
that much of the information didn't relate to Tracey at all, but rather t
o a fictional character from a TV crime show.

We left Dr Kloppers's office with a lot more information than we
had had when we entered. Were we a last getting somewhere? As an
antidote to false hope, I reminded myself that Connor still had very little to go on and that without the police's co-operation it was doubtful if we would ever know the truth.

Back in January, before all our heartache had started, Buddy had won
a competition in which the prize was accommodation at a few swish
lodges in the bushveld of Limpopo and Mpumalanga provinces. We
had made the booking for June and then forgotten all about it. Now
it was a welcome crumb of good fortune among all the misfortune
that had been heaped on us since March. I was looking forward to
getting away, craving an opportunity to pretend everything was nor
mal and I wasn't living life after death. By going away we could, at
least for a few days, live in a world in which we could make believe Tracey was still waiting for us at home.

But again the journey was haunted by the shadowy figures of two small children bouncing in the back seat. We reminisced, shed some tears and shared bittersweet memories until the shrill ringing of my
cell phone startled both of us, evoking the memory of how we had
received news of Buddy's father's death two months earlier.

It was Glen. “There's some guy desperately trying to get hold of
Dad. Can I give him your number?” he asked.

“Well, first find out what he wants. If it's Dad's work, just say you
couldn't get hold of us,” I replied, determined to give Buddy a break
from workaday worries.

Soon afterwards my phone rang again. I didn't recognise the num
ber, so I knew it must be important or Glen wouldn't have given out my
number. Please God, I prayed quickly, let it not be more bad news.

It was Buddy's brother's neighbour, asking to speak to Buddy.

“I'm sorry. He's driving and can't talk on the phone. Can I pass on a message?”

Buddy's older brother had shot himself. He was still alive, but the
prognosis was bad. A deathly silence hung in the air for a few moments
and I made Buddy pull over before I told him. He was already ex
pect
ing the worst, but the shock and disbelief etched on his face was dread
ful to watch. First his daughter, then his father, now this. It was too
much to bear.

To find out more about his brother's condition, we phoned our
niece who told us that the hospital's doctors were fighting to save her
father's life. She explained that he had shot himself in the head with
a pistol, causing severe head trauma. Her mother was in the bath when
she heard the shot and found him lying next to the water feature in
the garden – his favourite place. None of us had realised he was suf
fering from such severe depression. In the past, when he had been
depressed and thinking of committing suicide, he had always confided in Buddy or his wife, who had talked him out of it and things
had gradually returned to normal. This time, he had told no one how
depressed he was, or what he was planning.

Buddy spoke to his sister-in-law, who bravely insisted that we should
continue on our journey. She promised to let us know if there was
any change. Each day we checked for messages or missed calls on my phone. Assuming no news was good news, we satisfied ourselves that
my brother-in-law was still hanging on to life.

The next few days were filled with emotion, hiding my tears when
people we met asked whether I had children, speaking of my daugh
ter as if she was still alive. Worry about Buddy's brother's condition
was pushed to the back of my mind. His wife hadn't phoned so I was
sure things would turn out for the best.

The three tranquil days at the first lodge passed all too quickly and
we were on our way to the second when my phone rang. It was Glen again.

“Where have you been?” he demanded. “No one's been able to get hold of you!”

We didn't realise that the area we had been in was a dead zone
wit
hout cell phone signal. Calls and messages only started to come
through again once we left the area. All was not well as we had
thought. Buddy's brother had died the night he had shot himself.

“Who was it?” Buddy asked when I clicked off my phone.

I looked at him, trying to find the words. But I didn't have to say anything.

“When?” he asked softly.

My heart was breaking for his family. We phoned his sister-in-law
to say we would be coming home but she begged us not to cancel our
trip.

“You both need this time to build your mental strength so that you can deal with reality when you get home,” she said. We returned fo
r the funeral the following week, our third in as many months.

Since our meeting with Captain Kotze, one week had passed, then
two, three weeks and finally a whole month. Still there was no reply to the questions he had promised to respond to within a week.

Enough was enough. This was the last straw. I was tired of being
brushed off and lied to. Captain Kotze said he had the rope when in
fact the mortuary had lost it. He said forensics had examined the car,
yet there was no record of an examination. He kept telling me he
would be flying to Cape Town within a few days to do a lie detector
test on Wally, but the days stretched endlessly and tomorrow never
came. Sick of his procrastination, I e-mailed the complaints division of the SAPS, explaining my dissatisfaction.

Just under a week later an e-mail came from the superintendent and section head of the complaints division, who said he had looked
into my complaint and was satisfied with the progress that had been
made. He even asserted that PI Connor was satisfied with Captain
Kotze's work. I knew this was far from accurate, so the SAPS hadn't
even bothered to find out the truth. I fired back that I would be con
tacting the Police Commissioner because I wouldn't accept that the investigation had “followed procedure”. I was immune to their as
surances, their hollow spin, their whitewash.

Of course, it wasn't easy to get hold of a senior police officer, but eventually someone in Commissioner Nair's office promised to get
him to return my call. After two days, I phoned again. Another two days and I was back on the line. When could I expect Commissioner
Nair to contact me? In time my nagging paid off and I was put
through to him.

He listened to my story and asked me to send him everything in writing by e-mail. I included every bit of correspondence I had. And
there goes nothing, I told myself, by now expecting little but waiting
and being ignored. So I was astonished to get an e-mail from him
within a week. He said he had set up another meeting with Captain
Kotze, Senior-Superintendent Luyt, Connor, Buddy and me. Prompt action. I was impressed.

The day before the meeting, Captain Kotze let us know he wouldn't
be able to attend. This wasn't good news. When we arrived at the
appointed time, we were told that there had been a multiple shooting
in Benoni that required Senior-Superintendent Luyt's attention, so
he wasn't coming to our meeting either. Connor muttered under his breath.

The meeting was handed over to another superintendent, who in
troduced us to an Inspector Pearce who was now going to be handling
the case instead of Captain Kotze. He was, we were told, an extremely
experienced police officer from what was officially known as the
Serious and Violent Crime Unit. At last, the police had granted what
I had been requesting since April, just a few weeks after Tracey died
.
Every time I had asked for the case to be handed over to the Violent
Crime Unit, my request had been rejected. No reason was given. Now
it seemed that my correspondence with Commissioner Nair had in
stigated some action in a new and positive direction.

Once the meeting started, I realised there was another possible reason why things had changed. Someone referred to the fact that
Carte Blanche
, one of the top investigative TV shows in the country,
was going to be airing a programme about unsolved murders in June
2006 and Tracey's case was one of those that had been had selected
for the broadcast. I suspect that it put the wind up in the police's
sails
when the reporter contacted them for interviews about the case. It had always seemed to me that the only crimes that were solved in our country were the ones the media picked up on and followed. I
had heard many stories of people being raped or murdered yet the
perpetrators walked free. The police seemed to be better at making
an effort to do their jobs if the case involved someone famous or in
the public eye – and therefore in the media spotlight.

Six months had passed and the only information our family had was
what had come from Connor, the private investigator we had hired.
Now we were starting a new page in the police investigation and
In
spector Pearce arranged to come to my office the following week to
take my statement.

First I recapped what few facts I knew about the murder, then explained what had happened – or not happened – in the long months
since then. My antagonism to all police officers by this time must have
been palpable because Inspector Pearce's partner drew me aside and
assured me that Pearce was a good man and an excellent investigator
. Well, I thought, he may not be short on experience, but we'll have to wait and see how long he is on results.

Inspector Pearce promised to give me weekly updates, as Commis
sioner Nair had instructed. I almost snorted with scepticism. Yeah,
right, let's see this happen!

But for the next five or six weeks he phoned regularly, once a week
,
to report on progress. That was a huge big tick in his favour. I was con
cerned, though, about his obvious dislike of Connor and his apparent
unwillingness to co-operate with the PI.

“You can stop using Mr Connor now,” he suggested one day not long
after he took over. “He's pretty useless and he's only trying to make
money out of you. The police are very capable of doing the job.”

“Well, actually, my account with him has been paid in full and he's
now working on Tracey's case at no charge,” I shot back.

“Yes, but he's only out for the publicity, you know.”

“Well maybe, but I've got no intention of losing contact with him
and I'd really appreciate it if you would co-operate with him,” I replied. I restrained myself from pointing out that I knew the police
had still not taken statements from Tracey's housemates, nor done the
polygraph test on Wally which they had said they would.

“Oh well,” he grudgingly admitted, “I suppose under the circum
stances I can understand that you see Mr Connor as the only one until
now who has at least tried to establish what happened.”