FICTION: 'Bodies' is Christchurch author Emma Hart's winning entry in this year's open division of the Sunday Star-Times Short Story Awards.

This was not the sort of car Mike had been expecting to stop. Day like this, he hadn't been expecting anyone to stop for a while. Mind you, if it hadn't been for the rain, he wouldn't have been hitching. The rain and that possum. A set of bent forks later and here he was, stood on the side of the road in full leathers with a big pack and water slowly soaking through his beard. Not the sort of person that this woman, in that car, should be picking up. What was she thinking? She was just asking to be murdered to death in a ditch somewhere, stupid cow.

Still, gift horse and all that. As he walked over, the passenger window of the white BMW slid down with a smug hum. The driver leaned over to speak to him, giving him a good view of what was still some cracking cleavage, even at her age. "You can put your pack in the boot, there should be room." Her voice was deep and pleasant and somehow naggingly familiar.

He nodded his thanks and walked around to the back of the car. She'd popped the boot for him from inside. She was travelling, he could see: there was a suitcase, one of those long garment bags, and a box. There should just be room for his gear, though. As he manoeuvred the pack in, he knocked the box off the top of the case, and it spilled its guts into the boot. Swearing, he pulled the pack back out, grabbed at the contents of the box, and stopped. Heavy. Not as shiny as you might expect. Not that he knew shit about it, but this jewellery looked like gold. Driving around picking up hitch-hikers with a couple of k worth of gold in the back of the car. Honestly. Some people.

He swept it all up, bangles and ear-rings and a massive necklace thing, popped it back in the box, and finally got his bag settled. Then he walked around to the passenger door, looked dubiously at his boots, and got in the car. It was her carpet, she could worry about it.

She gave him a smooth smile and concentrated on pulling out into the traffic flow. Not bad-looking at all. Thick black hair streaked with white, not gray, pulled back in some kind of roll. Satiny white blouse that clung very nicely to those breasts he'd noticed before. Pretty nice legs in a tight gray skirt. It wasn't just the car that reeked of money.

Oh, now she was looking back at him. Best stop staring before she got the wrong idea. Probably wrong.

"So where are you headed?" she asked, in that voice he just couldn't place.

"Christchurch. Just as far as you're going's fine."

"You're in luck, I'm going all the way. What are you going down for? It must be quite important if you couldn't wait to get your bike fixed." She must have seen the surprise on his face, because she said, "I noticed your leathers. You're all scratched up on one side. You're hitch-hiking, so it must have been bad enough that you couldn't ride. And you don't look dumb enough to ride something so big you couldn't pick it up if you dropped it."

That was a phrase that sounded pretty weird in her plummy vowels. "Bike needs some work, yeah. I'll pick it up on the way back through." Hell, she'd asked. It'd be rude not to answer. "Going down for a funeral. My dad's."

She turned her head and stared at him for long enough that he started to worry about oncoming traffic. Her eyes were very blue. "And you're going down to make sure the bastard's actually dead?"

There was a long silence, and then Mike laughed. "Didn't know you'd met him."

She grinned, making the skin round her eyes go all crinkly. "Oh, I don't need to have met this particular one. Just ones like him, and people like you. I'm Laura. You couldn't get me a cigarette, could you? They're in the glove box. Have one yourself."

He'd been surprised she smoked until she saw the cigarettes: long and slender, black with gold filters. Jeez, how was he supposed to smoke one of these and not look more like a fag than it did? Still. Free was free. He lit one for her and passed it across, then lit his own and took a deep drag.

She laughed at the expression on his face, a deep warm sound. "Oh, I know. They look like a chic little lapdog and taste like midnight in a Polish rail yard. They're going to kill me, but I find that comforting, knowing what will. You didn't tell me your name."

"Mike." He should be talking more. "Sorry, it's bugging me. Your voice is really familiar."

"Let me help. 'It's a special kind of softness.'"

"That's it! You're the chick from that toilet paper ad!" He frowned. "Just the voice, though."

"Yes, well, the lovely young lady with the pneumatic breasts has a voice like someone ramming a kazoo up a gannet. That's where I come in."

He gave her a look back, like she'd given him earlier. "Mad. They should just have used you. Nothing wrong with your tits."

She laughed, while she popped the window to knock ash off her cigarette. "Well done. Aren't you lovely? I was going to push you out the door into traffic, but you can stay."

"It's your door that opens into traffic. You'd never manage it. I'm probably twice your weight."

"Oh, I'm very good at getting leverage. But in any case, we shan't have to test it today. I'm so glad I picked you up. This trip is normally so boring."

"You drive this road a lot?" He eyed her, and thought, what the hell. Take some risks. He might piss her off, but what was she going to do? "You shouldn't be picking up hitch-hikers though. It's not safe. I could be anybody."

"You're not though," she replied levelly. "You're you. You can't tell how dangerous someone is by looking at them. You can tell, sometimes, if they need help."

She didn't look like someone who had ever needed help. That was probably why she didn't know when she was taking stupid risks: because nothing had ever blown up in her face. "No, but you shouldn't. Specially not with all that stuff in the back."

Her voice lost its liquid, musical quality. "What stuff?"

"All that jewellery." Shit. "Box fell over. I wasn't poking round."

To his surprise, the tension in her faded as quickly as it had come. Whatever she was afraid of him finding, it wasn't that. "Well, let's say you're right and I shouldn't have picked you up because you're dangerous. All young and big and manly." She flipped the windscreen wipers on; the drizzle had turned to proper rain. "Do you want me to put you back where I found you?"

Huh. "Nah. You'd only pick up someone else, and he might be an axe murderer."

"Give me some credit. I'm not going to pick up someone carrying an axe, and there isn't one in the car." She flicked her butt out the window and put it back up, clearly done with that conversation.

After a few minutes of less than comfortable silence, Mike said, "So. What are you heading down for? Special occasion?" Because, getting it nicked aside, what was all that bling for?

She smiled slightly, unnervingly. "You could say that, I suppose. It's... like a reunion, from my university days. A bunch of us are getting back together. We do it regularly. It's useful to stay in touch." She paused; there was clearly something else she wanted to say. "Listen. I know you're in a hurry, but I usually stop for a late lunch in Kaikoura. I have friends who run a little place. Would you mind? I'll buy you a nice meal, we'll talk."

He shifted awkwardly in his seat. Any 'little place' run by friends of hers... "You sure they'll let me in?"

She laughed, and gave him a look he didn't really want to interpret. There was a savage amusement to it. "Oh, they will, believe me. It'll be delicious. Go on. Do something that would piss your dad off. I mean, why stop now, just because he's dead?"

Mike snorted. "He'd never believe this. Even if he saw it he'd be all 'yeah, that didn't happen'. Yeah, go on then. Just lunch, can't hurt."

Laura gave him another uncomfortable sideways look. Too knowing. "You think perhaps he retroactively died of shock? But I'm lovely. People's fathers always like me. All right then. Just lunch."

* * *

Laura leaned on the rail of the little balcony off the bedroom and watched the boy sleep. There was a stunning view behind her, from her friends' boutique cliff top hotel, but she preferred the one in front of her. He was so young. She really shouldn't have. Still, it was no fun not doing things, and she needed some fun right now. He was young, but strapping and energetic. Easily twice her size, dangerous-looking on the outside, but inside, just as gentle and damaged as she'd expected. He'd needed help, and perhaps she'd needed to help someone, to balance the scales.

Or perhaps it was simply that she enjoyed finding out what people were really like, under their costumes. She liked being surprised by people. You could never tell by looking, but she had better instincts than most. That was how she'd known, twenty years ago, that smug little rich daddy's boy was dangerous.

She sighed, pitched her cigarette butt off the balcony, and rubbed her temples. Glen would bitch at her later about the smoking, but she only did it when she came back down here, back into her past. Back to the scene of the crime.

She really needed to get going again. No point in dragging this out, in not finishing the journey once she'd started it. She would go back down to Christchurch, drink and laugh with friends, visit the old sacred places she never talked about, and check that the boy she'd put in the ground two decades ago was still there. It was an odd superstition for her to have: surely, she should be surer than anyone that he was dead, but it persisted. Maybe one day, he wouldn't be there.

She really did need to go.

* * *

Mike kept his eyes closed while he listened to Laura get dressed and get her stuff. No point making a fuss. He heard her stop, felt her looking at him, and then she was gone.

After the door shut and he heard her heels click off down the stairs, he sat up. She'd left a note on the bedside table. Her writing looked like her voice sounded; round and elegant.

Mike,

So sorry to run out. I'm sure you'll be able to pick something up from here. Best of luck with the funeral, love. Make sure the bastard goes in the ground. Make sure he stays there.

The paper was heavy and had an odd, chalky feel. At the top, it had her name, address and phone number.

Under the paper was a hundred bucks.

He sat there, naked, on the side of the bed with the money in one hand and the note in the other while his brain did absolutely nothing at all.

Fifteen minutes later he was standing on the side of the road in full leathers, with his pack, following a woman he knew he'd never find. At least it had stopped raining.

JUDGE STEPHANIE JOHNSON'S COMMENTS

This story gives us the grand themes of sex and death. Perspective moves fluidly between the two protagonists. The reader is not told everything about their predicaments. Elegantly and sparely written, Bodies allows us to draw our own conclusions about characters' pasts. The story is also about social class and mutual exploitation, expectations and secrets. Although the narration is tightly focussed on Laura and Mike, there is a strong sense of the wider world moving beyond their smaller concerns.