The Convenience of Lies by Geoffrey Seed

up.
    Instead, she gleamed in the sunshine like a flawless marble statue retrieved from a civilisation lost beneath the waves. A circle of onlookers gathered. No one moved, no one spoke.
    Nothing disturbed this almost photographic composition - still life with figures. McCall put his camera away. This was less out of respect than the guilty realisation he could almost be back in the bush, taking pictures he could never use to satisfy a compulsion to stare into the face of unnatural death.
    This much he knew as he gazed on the naked body…. not that of little Ruby Ross but of her mother, Etta.

 
    Fifteen
     
    Men make plans, God laughs - Jewish proverb .
     
    Etta’s apparent suicide altered everything. It robbed Benwick of a prime suspect. The course of Lexie’s life would change forever if Ruby turned up alive as she would have to care for her. And McCall’s piece about a missing child’s rare talent now needed a radical re-think.
    But his story might yet be blown away by the tabloids if Etta’s fascination with sex and Satanism leaked out. The manner of her death fed suspicion, not sympathy. Lexie was acutely aware of this as she tried to take in the enormity of what her sister had done - and all its implications.
    ‘Why in the name of all that’s holy would any mother kill herself while the police are still searching for her missing child?’
    McCall hadn’t an answer, not when they were surrounded by the paraphernalia of the occult - and possibly prostitution, too. This had to be the story Hoare had hinted at. The old muckraker must have wished he still worked for a Fleet Street red top.
    Lexie had caught the last train from Bristol after McCall rang and told her to get to London quickly and bring her spare key to Etta’s flat. He didn’t tell her the full story till they met at Paddington Station. There were tears then but of anger, not grief.
    ‘Selfish, wicked, stupid bitch,’ she said. ‘Never a thought for anyone else. Self, self, self - that’s always been Etta’s way. What’s her poor kid to do now? How’s she going to understand what her mother’s done? I should’ve stayed with her when Ruby disappeared but she didn’t want me to, told me she needed to be on her own. I understand why, now. What’s she been hiding, McCall? What the hell’s been going on in her life?’
    They drove to Etta’s flat and got some answers in her bedroom. Disbelief and alarm broke across Lexie’s face.
    ‘I’ve never been in here before,’ she said. ‘What was she getting into?’
    ‘Lots of people are interested in all this fortune telling stuff.’
    ‘Come on, I read tarot cards for fun but this magic’s much blacker, believe me.’
    ‘None of what’s happened is your fault. Your sister was an adult.’
    ‘On paper, maybe. No wonder Ruby didn’t have a chance.’
    ‘She wouldn’t have understood any of this, even if she’d seen it.’
    ‘This is all going to come out at the inquest, isn’t it?’
    ‘Depends on how relevant the cops think it is to her death.’
    ‘If this gets into the papers and Ruby’s still missing, they’re bound to think Etta was involved in some way.’
    ‘Let’s cross that bridge if we come to it.’
    They saw the condoms in Etta’s bedside cabinet - and the nurse’s uniform and a shoe box stuffed with bank notes. It all served to prove what Lexie feared most.
    ‘So this is how she ended up… my baby sister… on the game.’
    McCall bought a Chinese take-away in the parade of shops along Woodberry Street. They sat in Etta’s uncommonly clean kitchen, careful not to let any of the king prawns or fried rice spill from their plastic forks. Lexie became very quiet. Her fatigue seemed freighted with shame and guilt. She needed the refuge of sleep and left McCall rummaging through a small document box he’d found in Etta’s wardrobe.
    It was ebony inlaid with mother-of-pearl and held utility bills, cheap costume jewellery, Etta’s passport and a tenancy