Betrayed (3 page)

A car headed up the driveway and an elderly gentleman got out.
Looking at the rescue vehicle that was just pulling away, he apologised for intruding at a bad time and asked me to sign for a summons. Blind
,
automatic, I signed. Back in the safety of my kitchen I saw that it wa
s
for Tracey – a minor traffic offence. I pushed it into a crevice betwee
n the kitchen cupboards. I had far greater things to worry about.

Then like a bolt of lightning came the question that had been
pecking at my brain. When the police K9 unit had called the 4x4
Club volunteers off the rescue, had the dog unit carried on the search
for my daughter? Hands sweating, I grabbed the phone and dialled
the 4x4 rescuer.

I couldn't believe my ears. The K9 unit had packed up and gone
home at the same time as the volunteers. My knees buckled and I sat
down, afraid I would fall. They had given up, knowing that a young
girl was missing in what they considered an area “too dangerous” fo
r grown, trained men.

I was angry, desperate. Head in hands, battling tears that threatened to overwhelm me, I told myself to hold it together because it
was becoming more and more evident that finding out what had
happened to Tracey was going to be my responsibility. The authori
ties seemed uncommitted to their duty, indifferent to my family's
suffering.

Armed only with outrage and determination, I scoured the tele
phone directory for private numbers of high-powered police offi
cials.
When I found the private cellphone number of a Senior-Superinten
dent Barend Luyt, I had no qualms about interrupting him at home on a weekend. My child was missing and the department under his
control wasn't performing their duties to the best of their ability. He answered after a couple of rings, but all politeness evaporated when I started to explain my mission.

“What right do you have to contact me on my private number?” he
shouted. “Your daughter probably went out drinking for the weekend
and will walk in Monday morning with a ‘sorry Mom'!”

I seethed. How dare this stranger judge her? How dare someone
who
had never met my daughter tell me what she would or wouldn't
do? He clicked off. I dialled again but he had turned off his phone
and gone back to his life. A life in which his children were safe, his
wife not tormented by not knowing where they were.

That night the nightmares were worse than before, an endless spin
cycle of horrors. The reality that my daughter was missing – possibly dead – clawed at my heart. I knew Tracey too well. She wouldn't wil
l
ingly put her family under this kind of stress. Even at the height of her drug use, she would usually let us know where she was or that she wouldn't be home. Even if she phoned in the early hours of the
morning, she would let us know she was safe. Why would this time be
any different? Deep down I knew she was dead, though I tried to pus
h the thought away, as if denial could prevent it from being true.

Early on Sunday morning, trusting that Senior-Superintendent Luyt
had switched his phone back on, I dialled again. A sleepy voice an
swered
. Before he could disconnect again, I forced him to agree to
meet me on Monday morning at seven.

Sunday passed in a daze for the family. I vaguely remember driving
for hours, looking for any sign of Tracey. I had to find some constru
ctive way to fill the hours until my meeting with Luyt.

My husband Buddy searched through Tracey's notes and belongings
for the phone numbers of friends we may not have contacted. Like a
mantra, he kept on repeating that we would find her, but concern
was etched deep in his face. He had withdrawn into a world of his own,
his feelings buried deep inside, well hidden from the rest of the family
. An introvert, he seldom spoke about his feelings or emotions and I
was neglecting him, my thoughts following the single track of finding
Tracey, no space for anything – or anyone else.

I resented the apparent ease with which Buddy fell asleep those
first two nights, but his keening chilled my blood. Sleep brought
him no rest, just vivid pictures of tragedy and pain I couldn't see. He would become quiet for a few moments as he turned to hold me in a
death grip. Then he would toss away restlessly and the keening would
begin again.

Each morning my first thought would be of Tracey. Buddy and I
hardly spoke as we went about our morning business. We didn't know
what to say to each other. Neither of us wanted to voice our fears. Our
son, too, was haggard, bags under his eyes hinting that his dark hour
s
were as haunted as ours. Each of us was trying to protect the other
from reality yet making it harder by not sharing our inner torment, a family united in worry yet isolated in pain.

My heart was a stone slowly being crushed. One tiny grain of sand
was the only hope I had left, the hope that she was still alive. But wit
h
each passing hour, even this speck of hope was being drowned by
the growing certainty of her death.

Late Sunday afternoon I said to Buddy, “You do know your daughte
r is dead, don't you? Please prepare yourself to bury her.”

The colour drained from his face.

“Don't even say that,” he whispered.

Monday morning I was wide-eyed and tense. It had been three days since Tracey's car had been found. I watched the sky expand with a
pale grey light until it was time for Glen and I to go to police headquar
ters for our meeting.

Although we briefly met Senior-Superintendent Luyt, I wasn't sur
prised when he told us he was unavailable for the meeting and passed
us over to another captain of the division. This officer explained that
a man named Captain Nick Kotze, “the best on the East Rand”, had
been assigned to the case and we would be hearing from him shortly
.
None of the officers we spoke to even knew that we had filled in a
missing person's report.

Slowly the awful truth dawned: the missing person's docket had
been shelved and hadn't found its way to the detective division.

Frustrated and furious though we were, we had little choice but to
leave the police headquarters and wait for Captain Kotze to contact us.
It seemed a good time to go to the pound to fetch Tracey's car, which
we hadn't been able to retrieve on Friday because the pound was closi
ng for the weekend.

“He must wait outside,” barked the guard at the gate, pointing at
my son. “Only you can come in.”

Without directions on where to go or who to see, I wandered around
for a bit before someone pointed me to the waiting room. I was the
only person there. I waited. And I waited. For three hours I watched
people amble around, drink tea and laugh among themselves, until
frustration got the better of me and I stormed into an adjoining office,
only to be told I had no authority to be there. I cracked. I thumped
my fist down on the desk.

“Unless someone attends to me I will be contacting the lawyers and you can deal with them,” I threatened.

The man behind the desk slammed his cup into the saucer, spilling coffee over the paperwork on his desk, screaming for someone to get
me out of his office and find out what my problem was.

More than two hours later I was still waiting to have the car re
leased. Then, finally, with paperwork in hand, I was directed to the
security office to fetch the keys for my vehicle. But no keys could be found. The register recorded that they had been received – so where were they? After another hour of fruitless attempts to look for keys
that had mysteriously vanished from the safe, I told them to forget
the keys.

“I've phoned for a low-bed to take the car,” I explained in a voice
tight with suppressed anger. The man shook his head.

“Cancel the towing service. The pound is closing and you'll have to come back tomorrow.”

Thwarted, drained of energy, I returned to the front gate where Glen was still waiting.

“Wait,” the security guard barked. “You can't leave the premises
without a signed security pass from the person you came to see.”

Perhaps it was the expression on my face, perhaps it was my bitter
invective, but he hesitated only a few seconds. Then he opened the gate and I was free.

“I'll be back early tomorrow morning,” I spat. “And God help anyone who delays me in removing my car.”

Another fruitless, wasted day that should have been spent finding my child.

1
990–
1
994

Even as a small child, Tracey was always chattering about how she was
going to work with children when she was big, how she was going to play
every sport in the world. She wasn't picky about sport, loving it all with blanket fervour. Her favourite was whichever one she was playing or watching
on TV at the time. A lively little girl full of zip and gusto, no dolls or toy cars
could entertain her. Instead, she was usually outside running, climbing trees, swinging on the jungle gym. We lived on a smallholding so we could keep dogs and horses. This meant that there was plenty of space for her to run around and work off her extra energy.

The house was very old and the grounds had very few trees – just veld.
When the children were born I planted an acorn for each of them, which
eventually grew into beautiful oak trees. Every Christmas we had a real tree that we would plant out on the plot once the festive season was over. Although the house itself was fenced off from the rest of the land, this didn't stop the horses getting in and eating the tops off the Christmas trees. As fast as I planted flowers and shrubs, the dogs would dig them up or the horses would eat them. As a little girl, Tracey was always keen to “help” to dig the
planting holes, but they didn't hold her attention for long and soon she
would run off to find something more exciting to do.

If the back yard suddenly went quiet, Tracey nowhere in sight with her soccer ball or romping with the dogs, I knew she would be with the horses at the back of the plot. I used to warn her to be careful because horses could kick and bite, but where animals were concerned, fear wasn't a word in her vocabulary. We had a lot of snakes, rats and mice living in the long grass, and even the snakes fascinated rather than repelled her. It wasn't unheard of to have them coming into the house, but the dogs usually alerted us or the cockatiel squawked, “Call the A-Team, call the A-Team!”

Dashing from one part of the garden to another, Tracey often found injured birds or other creepy crawlies that needed her attention. “Look what I
found” was a frequent cry. No matter how small, she would gently carry
them in for us to look after and make better – as long as it wasn't a spider.
For some reason spiders, even one the size of a pinhead, would send her
running for cover, her only weak spot where living creatures were con
cerned. We often found frogs and toads hiding in the toes of our shoes. She never tipped them out but removed them carefully and carried them outside to a place she thought they would like.

Animal waifs and strays seemed to be drawn to our plot like magnets. Our dogs were all pavement specials and rescue cases. Any dog running
along the side of the road was a stray in Tracey's eyes and needed her
care; sometimes it was hard to convince her that the dog was just out for a run from his home nearby. Many a time she would come home with a shiv
ering puppy or bedraggled kitten she had found wandering the streets.
It didn't matter how sick and foul-smelling the tiny animal was, she would
wrap it in her jersey to keep it warm. As a result, she was no stranger to the
vet's rooms, often accompanying these sickly orphans on their visits to be
healed, talking quietly to them along the way, reassuring them that their
troubles would soon be over and she would take care of them.

One winter's day when an icy wind was blowing, Tracey and I took our gardener's dog, which had been sick for a few days, to our vet Dr Henry.

“You're not allowed to let Sasha die,” Tracey instructed, tears welling in her eyes. He caught my eye and shook his head ever so slightly so I knew he was going to have to put the animal down. I waited till Tracey was in the
car, then quickly ran back to ask the vet not to inject the dog until I could
be with her, determined she shouldn't die alone.