Deceive and Defend

by Marilyn Cohen de Villiers

  Here they come. They are wheeling Tiffany to the ambulance on a stretcher. Ooh look, she has a drip. She must be really sick to have a drip. I had a drip when I lost my baby. I hope Tiffany has lost her baby too. Serve her right.

  There’s Yair. Why is he walking next to the stretcher? I hope he doesn’t see me. He might be cross that I’m watching but he isn’t looking up. He’s too busy watching Tiffany. I hate Tiffany. I’m going to tell Yair on her, then he’ll shout at her again. They are putting the stretcher into the ambulance – I hope Yair doesn’t get in too. He mustn’t leave me alone. He can’t leave me alone. He promised. He did. He did. He loves me – he can’t go with Tiffany. I will tell him how horrible she is to me and then he won’t let her stay in our house anymore. Serve her right. Oh good, they are closing the ambulance doors and Yair is still standing on the driveway. Silly me. Of course he wouldn’t go with her. He loves me, not her. He loves me. Yay – they’ve put the sirens on. Lucky Tiffany, to ride in an ambulance with the sirens on and everything. I wonder if it makes such a loud noise inside the ambulance? They’ve gone. Sjoe, that was exciting.

  I’m sure I can leave my room now. I’m hungry. I want some of my birthday cake for breakfast. I’m a grownup so I can have anything I want for breakfast. Even cake. It’s my cake and I’ll eat it for breakfast, and no one will tell me I can’t. Not even Thembi. Anyway, Thembi is going to come in late today because of my party and having to clean up and everything afterwards so I’m going to go down to the kitchen and I’m going to help myself to my cake before she comes in and makes me horrible Maltabella porridge. I hate Maltabella. It looks like poo. And I’ll also make myself some hot chocolate; I don’t care that you are only supposed to have hot chocolate at bedtime. I can make very nice hot chocolate all by myself, even horrible Tiffany said so. I’ll make some for Yair too. He’ll be so proud of me. I hope those other people leave soon. I don’t want to see them. I don’t like them. They pretend to be nice to me but they’re not. I want to go downstairs now. I don’t care what Yair says. I’m a grown-up and I can do what I like. But I don’t want those other horrible people to see me so I’ll be as quiet as a mouse.

  Chapter 5

  Tracy

  Tracy slowed Buttercup and prepared herself to argue with the guard at the boom as usual, but the barricade was open and he waved her through. The old car groaned and rattled as it bounced over the speed bumps and shuddered to a grateful halt outside the Silvermans’ wrought-iron gates. Two police vehicles and several other cars were parked at the end of the long driveway near the front entrance. Tracy didn’t recognise any of them. She opened her window, leaned out and pressed the intercom buzzer.

  ‘Yes?’ said a distorted voice.

  ‘Hi, it’s me. Tracy.’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘Tracy. Tracy Jacobs. Please open.’

  ‘Wait.’

  Tracy waited, her stomach churning. She couldn’t see an ambulance so either it had already left with the injured—if there were injured—or... or they were waiting for the mortuary van... or maybe it was nothing, a false alarm. But then why were the police still there? Whose cars were those parked behind the police cars? Where was Yair? She waited, drumming her fingers on the steering wheel. After what seemed like forever, she pressed the buzzer again.

  ‘What?’ asked the voice.

  ‘It’s Tracy. Open the gate.’

  ‘You are blocking the driveway. Move your car.’

  ‘But... what’s going on? Who are you?’ Tracy demanded. ‘Open up. Where’s Yair? Tell him I’m here.’

  ‘You are blocking the driveway. Move your car immediately.’

  ‘But... but I want to drive in.’

  Silence.

  Tracy reversed and parked her car as close to the Silverman driveway as she could. She got out, locked Buttercup, went back to the intercom and pressed the buzzer again. No response.

  A car screeched to a halt behind Buttercup. Tracy groaned as the driver and his passenger, who was toting a heavy camera bag, approached her. Damn. The vultures were starting to arrive.

  ‘Tracy,’ said Lerato, The Star’s crime reporter, ‘what’s up?’

  ‘Just got here. The gates are locked. What have you heard?’

  ‘Nothing much. Apparently there’s one victim.’

  Tracy’s heart froze. ‘Really? Victim of what? Male or female?’ she asked, surprised that her voice sounded so normal, so calm.

  ‘Not sure. A female, we think.’

  Tracy held tightly to the gate, her knees almost giving way as relief washed over her. Not Yair then. But who? Zivah? Poor Yair. He’d never forgive himself if anything had happened to his little sister.

  ‘Name?’

  ‘No confirmed ID yet.’

  ‘What happened?’

  Lerato shrugged and turned away as two more cars drew up and disgorged more media people, including a television crew. Another possibly unnatural death at the infamous Silverman home was too good to miss, even in crime-soaked Johannesburg.

  She pressed the buzzer again.

  ***

  Tracy hit the delete button and the paltry sentences she had spent the past hour painstakingly typing disappeared. She rubbed her eyes and swallowed. She couldn’t do this. She couldn’t write this story, at least not with all the information she had. The only reason she had it was because Yair and Tiffany and Zivah and Stembiso and Tiffany’s mom, Susan Horwitz, trusted her. How could she betray that trust? But Stembiso’s quiet voice kept looping through her brain: ‘They were shouting, after everyone went home. Master Yair and Miss Tiffany. He was shouting and she was shouting. Master Yair, he does not shout. Not even when he was a little boy and Miss Avi was fighting with him.’

  ‘Who? Who was Yair shouting at? Could you hear what they said?’ she’d asked the old driver who had seen her standing at the gates and come over to speak to her. But a police officer had arrived and ordered the old man away, back to the house.

  Tracy had waited apprehensively with the other reporters.

  ‘What did that old man say? Who is he?’ Lerato asked.

  ‘Nothing. No-one. He just wanted to know who we are and what we want.’

  They had waited and eventually, a plain-clothes police officer had emerged through the gates.

  ‘A white female was discovered in the hallway at the foot of the stairs at about 5.30am. She was unconscious,’ the officer said. ‘An ambulance was called and she was taken to hospital.’

  ‘Who? What’s her name? Why are the police involved? What is her condition now? How did she end up at the bottom of the stairs? Was she shot?’ Lerato demanded.

  ‘Is she a family member? A friend? A girlfriend?’ someone else yelled.

  Tracy held her breath.

  ‘We cannot release her identity until her next of kin has been informed and that is all the information I have for you.’

  Relief flooded Tracy. So it probably wasn’t Zivah because her next of kin was right there, in the house. Although if it was, Avi would have to be told. But no one knew where Avi was. So if it wasn’t Zivah, who was it? Tiffany? Shit... no. Surely not. Who else? One of the other women who’d stayed over in the house after the party? And why had the police been called? Who had called them?

  While the other reporters continued to bombard the police officer with questions—questions that were unlikely to be answered—Tracy slipped away. She knew exactly which hospital the unidentified white female had been taken to – the Linksfield Clinic was only minutes away.

  ***

  Ten minutes later Tracy was standing at the information counter at the Linksfield Clinic’s emergency department.

  ‘Tiffany Horwitz was brought in early this morning. By ambulance. Is she still here or has she been admitted to the hospital or was she discharged?’ Tracy asked, trying desperately to sound more confident than she felt.

  The young woman with a badge stating ‘Sabrina Pillay, Patient Liaison’ pinned to her blue blouse, slowly typed into her comput
er, stared at the monitor, then shook her head. Tracy’s heart sank.

  ‘How do you spell that? There’s no one with that name.’

  ‘H..o..r..w..i..t..z. Tiffany Horwitz.’

  ‘That’s what I typed. Sorry, she isn’t a patient here.’

  Tracy frowned. So it wasn’t Tiffany, after all. She was about to ask if Zivah Silverman had been admitted, when it struck her. ‘Try Tiffany Zaldain... Z..a..l..d..a..i..n. She married recently but I still think of her as Tiffany Horwitz.’

  Sabrina Pillay slowly typed in the name and her eyes widened. ‘I’m so sorry,’ she said. ‘Um... I... um... who did you say you are?’

  ‘A close friend. A family friend,’ Tracy said.

  ‘I’m sorry. Um... Hospital policy prevents me from releasing any information about patients except to immediate family.’

  ‘So she is here! Where is she?’

  ‘I really can’t say.’

  ‘But I have to... is she all right? Was she admitted?’

  ‘I’m sorry... I don’t know... please, I have to ask you to leave.’

  Tracy turned and ran through the waiting room, ignoring the dozens of curious stares. She hurried to the hospital’s main entrance and asked a bored-looking black woman behind the information counter for Tiffany Zaldain’s ward, but received the same, uncooperative response. Frustrated, she walked slowly to the coffee shop at the opposite side of the hospital foyer, chose a table that would give her an unobstructed view of everyone entering or leaving, ordered an espresso and marshalled her thoughts.

  One: she knew—well she was pretty certain—that the unidentified white female was Tiffany. Two: Tiffany had been brought to Linksfield Clinic after being found unconscious at the bottom of the stairs. Three: nothing. She had nothing else. She hadn’t even been able to confirm whether Tiffany had been admitted. If she hadn’t, it wasn’t much of a story. If she had, it probably wasn’t a story either. Mafuta would kill her. There had to be something more to it. Why else were the police involved? Why the secrecy at the emergency room and hospital receptions? What had happened to Tiffany – or whoever it was? If it was Tiffany; what was her condition? And the baby... what about the baby?

  The lift doors opened and a skinny old woman—not old exactly, probably around her mother, Maxine’s, age—emerged. Susan Horwitz! Tracy remembered her from school with her long, bottle-blonde hair and mutton-dressed-as-lamb fashion choices. She’d once come to pick Tiffany up after school in some clapped-out old van with ‘Pete’s Plumbing’ or something like that emblazoned on the side, and Tiffany had thrown a spectacular hissy fit right there in the parking lot, screaming that her mother was embarrassing her and she’d rather take the bus home than be fetched in his van. It had been the talk of the school for at least a week. Tracy remembered wondering who he was, but there had always been gossip about Susan Horwitz’s many boyfriends. No wonder poor Tiffany had turned out as she had.

  Tracy fumbled in her purse, slammed a R50 note on to the table—too bad about the change—and scrambled towards the woman who was dressed in tight jeans fashionably ripped over both knees; a tight, very low-cut, sleeveless red top that showed off her wrinkly cleavage; and gold stiletto sandals.

  Tracy took a deep breath, mentally crossed her fingers and blurted: ‘Mrs Horwitz? Hi. I’m not sure you’d remember me. I’m Tracy Jacobs. I was at school with Tiffany. How is she?’

  ‘Tiffany? Tiffany is...’ The older woman’s red-rimmed eyes filled with tears and her pale face, contrasting vividly with the mascara-streaked black bruises down her sunken cheeks, crumpled. Her bony shoulders began to shake. Tracy took her arm gently and led her across the foyer to the coffee shop. The woman sank into a chair, put her hands over her face and sobbed. Tracy reached over and awkwardly patted her arm.

  ‘Mrs Horwitz. I’m so sorry. Are you okay? Is Tiffany okay?’

  ‘Tiffany. No. She’s not. She’s... she’s... oh my God, I don’t believe it. I cannot believe it. I won’t believe it...’

  ‘What? What’s happened?’

  ‘It’s Tiffany. My Tiffany. My baby girl.’ Mrs Horwitz sobbed.

  ‘Is she very bad?’

  Mrs Horwitz shook her head and sniffed loudly. Tracy fumbled in her bag for a tissue and handed it over. The older woman blew her nose loudly.

  ‘Mrs Horwitz,’ Tracy said desperately. ‘What’s wrong with Tiffany? Is she very sick?’

  ‘She’s never been sick a day in her life! She’s never been to a hospital. She must have been so scared... my poor baby.’ Mrs Horwitz’s sobs rose to a crescendo. Tracy squirmed, but everyone in the coffee shop was looking tactfully away.

  Eventually, her sobbing subsided. Tracy handed her another tissue and tried again.

  ‘Mrs Horwitz, how is Tiffany?’

  ‘She’s dead! Oh my God, my little girl is dead. She’s dead...’ Her voice started to rise again.

  Tracy gasped and her heart started beating a tattoo in her chest. She squeezed Mrs Horwitz’s hand.

  ‘Oh no! I’m so sorry. I wish you long life. What happened?’

  ‘She died. She’s dead.’

  ‘Yes, but how?’ Tracy bit her lip and tried again. She had to find out. ‘What happened?’

  ‘I don’t know. I don’t know. They couldn’t say. I think... they think... I think they think ... oh my God, they think she was killed. Murdered. Someone murdered my little girl!’

  Tracy’s heart froze. ‘Shh. Shhh,’ she whispered as heads throughout the foyer and coffee shop swung towards them. ‘Are you sure? She was murdered? How? Oh my God, that’s terrible.’ She frantically signalled a waiter and asked for two glasses of water. She felt faint.

  Susan Horwitz drew a shuddering breath, opened her oversized handbag, pulled out a mirror and examined her face. ‘Oh my God, look what I look like!’ She dabbed ineffectively at her cheeks with a crumpled tissue.

  ‘Mrs Horwitz, why do they think Tiffany was murdered?’ Tracy whispered urgently, convinced the woman could hear her heart tap-dancing in her chest.

  ‘I don’t know. The doctor said she had bruises and scrapes all over her body.’

  ‘Was she assaulted?’

  ‘No. No I don’t think so. They think she might have fallen down the stairs.’

  ‘Is that how she... how she died?’

  ‘Yes. No. I don’t know. I asked the doctor. He said they can’t be sure. My poor baby.’

  ‘So why... how did... I mean, they must have some idea why she...?’

  ‘I don’t think they have a clue, they are so stupid. He asked me a lot of questions.’

  ‘Who did?’

  ‘The doctor. And the policeman.’

  ‘A police officer asked you questions?’

  ‘No, the doctor asked most of the questions. Like what medicines she took – whether she was on drugs! Drug! My Tiffany was not a druggie. No way. Not a chance. I would have known. I’m her mother. She’s a good, honest, decent girl.’

  Tracy’s mind whirled. Mrs Horwitz’s voice faded – it was like listening to her through a very long, very dark tunnel ‘...and they will only know for sure when they do the autopsy’.

  ‘Autopsy? They’re going to do an autopsy?’ Tracy whispered

  ‘It’s awful. They’re going to cut my baby up,’ Mrs Horwitz wailed. ‘Oh God. I can’t believe she’s gone. She was so happy when she came back from America. She should never have stayed there. She’d still be alive if she’d only come home like I told her to. But she knew better. She always knew better. If she’d only listened to me she’d still be alive.’

  ***

  ‘TT – what the fuck have you been doing all day?’ Mafuta roared across the newsroom. ‘There’s nothing in your crappy story that The Star hasn’t already reported. In fact The Star has more. They at least gave the victim a name – Tryphina Zaider. They say she fell down the stairs, broke her neck and died instantly. They say police suspect that she was pushed because of the force of her fall. So who pushed her? You don’t say. You don’t s
ay anything in your fucking story. You have been working on it all fucking day and you give me this piece of crap that says nothing. I thought you knew these people. Who was this Zaider woman?’