Everything began with my first dead body.

I mean, well, the first time I'd ever seen a real murder victim's body. Geez, I didn't kill anybody... That sounded bad, I'm sorry. But it did all start with a dead body. At least, that's the way I think it started.

Bec reckons it actually began when we landed that dumb research assistant job with the local police unit. God, we were stupid back then. I never thought I'd be calling Bec stupid but... Maybe it was just pure naivety and inexperience. Maybe it was just that proud, astonishingly silly assumption that just because we had spent four years at university studying psychology and criminology we were ready for anything - including real cases in the real world.

Such delusion makes us both seem incredibly dim-witted. We'd spent those four years amongst bloodless books and silent essays, creating courses of action safely from behind a mound of data, segregated from real emotion and trauma by the black and white words of the page. It had been a time of quiet industry; the outside world and all of its realities had hardly brushed us at all. Now the real world has intruded, in a gigantic way and I think that both of us feel humbled by our misconstrued perception of ourselves. 

But I'm making a mess of things here.

Let me just go back to where I got myself onto the scene of a fatality and we'll attempt to figure out how I ended up here, at the end, with a story so ridiculously ludicrous, twisted and heart-wrenching that I became a part of it somehow, instead of the academic observer.

Please, let me tell you my story.

"Cooking scones."

"What?"

I glanced away from the blinding glare of my laptop's screen. It took a significant amount of undignified blinking to get the room to come into focus. In my blindness, I managed to smack my elbow pretty good on the wall. Only then, after all the blinks and swearing at my new injury could I finally see Rebecca, seated on the opposite side of our tiny room.

I tried to make sense of her rude interruption. What the hell was she on about? Cooking scones?

"Scones," she urged. "That's what we'll do. I'll hunt up the ingredients and we can eat away all our frustrations watching hot British actors on TV."

The tiny little converted-closet room the sergeant had showed us into for our research project barely had enough room but I somehow succeeded in wheeling my squeaky desk chair back at least an inch. I studied her, with some kind of amused exasperation on my face.

My best friend in the entire world, Rebecca Holstein-March. A kaleidoscope of contradictions. Typically, the first thing anyone noticed about her was that she was built fit and muscular for a girl. Lengthy hours at the gym, at boxercise and in the army cadets had given her a well-toned physique, complete with six-pack. She wasn't bulky, not by any means of the imagination, but she did appear strong and lithe.

If anyone started up a conversation with her they soon noticed her direct, fast, fiery manner of speaking. That mouth of hers ran at a hundred miles an hour. She had a lot of blunt words and she used them. But what became quickly evident about Rebecca - or Bec as she preferred to be known - was her incredible intelligence. That girl's mind moved at speeds others could not even dream of and she made connections, associations, solutions, conclusions and observations at a blindingly quick pace. Her ferocious intellect, together with her complete inability to consider the opinions of others as remotely significant upon herself unless they were more correct, generally made the most impact upon a stranger's impression of Bec.

But I, the more emotional and slow-witted Watson of this friendship, saw all the contradictions and quirks that made her absolutely unique in the world. She had incredibly feminine hair, nails and eyes however she never preened or tried to keep them so. She had no boyfriend and absolutely no interest in obtaining one but an armada of actors and fictional characters she would swoon over. There were times where she would be totally ignorant as to social conventions or other's feelings, having considered them totally uninteresting but she was astonishingly loyal to her friends. She'd strew her DVDs and novels everywhere while her workspace and the rest of her apartment were immaculate. She mistrusted credit cards but used nothing else to pay for her groceries.

And now this. Bec was a notorious dieter, so much so that both her mother and her doctor had tried to convince her to put on weight. She was a health-food nut. She found healthier alternatives for everything she could. How did scones fit into this picture?

Well, even after four years, Bec always kept me guessing. It was one of the things I loved about her.

"You're fine to come over," I laughed. "But I thought scones and jam and cream weren't your kind of deal."

Bec carefully highlighted some note she'd made as she answered.

"That's because you've never tried my lemonade scones. You'll be begging me to bake them every week from then on."

I considered it. Our standing television with our favourite show plus scones, jam and cream.

My mouth watered.

"Done. It's a plan."

I sat there attacking the research notes with considerably more vigour after that. It got to the stage where I was wading hesitantly through a complex report on police paperwork protocols when I heard the scanner crackle to life just outside. Even though neither Bec or I had yet decoded the lists of number and letter combinations the police used to code their jobs, I could tell this was important. The amount of feet that consequently ran past our room-closet to reply to the static-filled message startled us from our dull, repetitive work.

"Shit, they're moving," muttered Bec. The door had a tiny glazed rectangular glass panel she could see vaguely through to the police station corridor. It got clearer the closer you were, so Bec half-rose from out of her chair to peek.

We’d only been here a few days but already Bec and I had come to the unanimous decision that once you’d seen one police station, you had seen them all. They all consisted of unremarkable dull-toned walls with posters advertising practises or community events, bland and moderately uncomfortable seats, tiny nook-holed offices and rigid metal bars on anything that required additional security. It was small, it was U-shaped and it was easy to forget what room you were in because they all seemed to consist of the exact same items of furniture. The only exception was the scuffed old kitchen. This one had the permanent residue of past coffees and smelt of lemon and lime dishwashing liquid all the time.

The uniformity of everything was confusing and at times, incredibly frustrating. If we were asked to find something there was no point of reference in any room to work with, we just had to rummage around in everything possible until, through sheer luck, we laid our hands on something that vaguely resembled what we had been told to find. Our fellow staff were often stressed, tetchy and too busy to answer our questions. We spent much of the first day just trying to acclimatise to our new surroundings.

Bec’s view was one I had memorised already. One narrow and dark corridor to the front desk, the sliver of the office next door and a poster for community safety barbecue dates. That was it. The scanner we were listening for was right at the very front of next door’s office.

My legs were pinned under the minuscule desk. I could only listen, straining my ears from the opposite side of the room. Whoever the officer was on the other end of the broadcast, they sounded tense but professional. I admired their hurried, urgent tone but couldn't catch any distinct words.

"A murder or something?" I guessed. "Could we possibly get a serious crime the very second day of our internship, you reckon?"

"Maybe..." But Bec drew the word out in her unwillingness to accept my suggestion. We were both stock-still, she still in her awkward half-raised pose at the door, me straight-backed behind the chipped grey desk. The claustrophobic room pressed in on us and the thick white-washed walls were not particularly permeable to sound. Unconsciously we were both straining our ears.

After a few moments of low conversation by officers close to the door I managed to catch the word 'fatal' and hissed out a breath. A car accident. A fatal crash on the road somewhere in the city. Right at that moment, some cruisers would be sent out to secure the scene and accumulate witness statements; forensics would soon follow. But there was already some poor person lying dead.

"Geez," I managed. "Did you catch that? It's a fatal."

"Yeah."

At the same time I was feeling sorry someone's relative had passed away, I was desperately hoping it was no one I knew. Mentally I reviewed the most likely culprits for driving unsafely that I knew but none of them would be in the city. I tried to convince myself it couldn't be any of them.

The gripe of anxiety gnawed away at my thoughts but apparently the news didn't faze Bec that much.

"Well, they'll have the report through soon," Bec sighed and sat back in her chair, fixing her work pants so they didn't crease at the knees with an elegant little tug. "We'll stick it in the death stats."

"Another road fatality," I mused. "What, that makes it twenty-seven this year?"

"Yep."

"God."

Bec shook her head and I saw the disgust in those wise, brown eyes of hers. "Some idiot driving way too fast, drunk or on the phone."

As if to prove her bland assessment wrong, at that moment the door was pushed open. We sat there like stunned deer in headlights as a detective whose name I couldn't quite recall stuck his head inside. He read our expressions and his mouth set in a grim line.

"Do you girls want to get out to a crime scene?" he asked gruffly.

Something in his eyes flashed as he spoke and I knew what it meant. Anger. It meant he thought that the scene was no place for some young Masters students, it wasn't his job to ferry us around but someone higher on the food chain had given him his orders. Most of the older officers resented our work here at the station and I didn't really blame them. Who would want two inexperienced female students impinging on their turf, reviewing their performances, tallying their statistics as proof of success or failure?

But our professor had wiggled us into this gig with a lot of persuasion and professionally it was a humongous leap forward for us both, so we had no qualms.

But those eyes, they spoke of growing resentment. I resolved to make some kind of bridge between us and the long-serving officers, otherwise the next three months were going to get mighty uncomfortable.

"I do," I said, dragging a pen and writing pad into my handbag and springing to my feet. "I'll come."

Bec just shook her head. "I'm midway through a t-test. Claire will get what we need."

Her faith in me made me smile at the grim-faced detective.

"I won't be any trouble, I promise sir," I cajoled, laying on the charm. A crime scene! "I'd love to see the forensics in action."

The little 'sir' seemed to have worked; the guy visibly relaxed a little.

"One of you should be fine, we're in car seventeen. It's unmarked," he instructed.

We left but I managed a quick look of triumph with Bec. Her face just said 'good luck and don't screw up.' It made me roll my eyes. Miss Holmes, you can actually depend on Watson once in a while. Geez.

As the detective whose name still escaped me hurried me past the front counter, Felix gave me a lopsided grin.

"Ten bucks says you'll faint, Claire."

Felix was always so friendly to Bec and I but perhaps that was because he was the young guy on the front desk of the station and we were the right age to hit on. But I gave him a small confident smile at his challenge. I'd been to autopsies at university; bodies didn't seem to affect me overmuch.

"Ten bucks says you're wrong," I sealed the bet and handed the detective his required files out of his pigeonhole for good measure. I caught Felix eying the vending machine as we left, probably imagining what he'd get with his bet earnings. Well, tough luck buddy. Us girls can have iron stomachs too. I looked forward to taking the cash off him when we returned; it gave me a strong feeling of satisfaction.

We took the ancient, beat-up Corolla on the end of the station's car park, the one that used to be red but had since faded to a strange brown rust shade. The inside was plush and modern however, obviously they'd spent all their renovation money on the interior. It smelt, oddly enough, like Juicy Fruit chewing gum and new leather. My face wrinkled a bit - strange combination. I was also relieved to find that it was pleasantly warm inside. Australian winters aren't particularly savage but I hated the cold with all my heart and anything to rid the nip of chilliness from my fingers was a blessing. That ridiculous closet-office space got frightfully chilly at the start and end of the day.

As the detective got into the driver's seat I caught the flash of his name badge - Detective Harold Gold. He was known as Harry, I remembered. A very well-respected officer at the station, or so I’d heard. He seemed to be a fit and strong man – sturdy and broad instead of overly muscular. Slightly balding at the back of his head, I noticed without actually meaning to. I could see the interior of the car reflected in his polished and slightly scuffed black shoes. Everything about him spoke of efficiency; the practical analogue wristwatch he wore, his perfectly shaved face, his trim work pants, those ridiculously shiny shoes, the pens clipped onto his pocket lip in an orderly row. He seemed on the surface to be the perfect man for the police force - naturally authoritative, physically imposing enough to deter crooks and skilled enough with his words to comfort victims.

Harry did intimidate me slightly but I was brand new, young and didn't know how to relate to him in the slightest. It was understandable.

We drove in slightly awkward silence until Harry turned on the radio, but quietly, so that the most frequent and dominating sound was the crackle of the scanner-radio. I looked out the window, switched my phone to silent and scrawled the date on a new blank page in my writing pad. The sky outside was grey and dismal - probably fitting for viewing a newly-formed corpse. 

It was my first time seeing a victim of a crime that led to a fatality... An actual dead person, if you wanted to be perfectly blunt about it. I had plenty of experience with dissections, handling organs and watching an autopsy but there was no violence in any of those previous scenarios. The pieces of the person had been dealt with carefully, professionally, respectfully. I had been surrounded by fellow students in a laboratory, laughing about the hilarious plastic attire we'd been forced to don as part of health and safety beforehand. The cockiness I had flashed at Felix started waning when we pulled up next to those oddly hypnotic red and blue flashing lights. This was real; no jokes here.

Harry seemed to be weary and I noticed his hand absentmindedly taping the gun strapped in his holster as we got out. Hard to miss, really. The quick staccato tapping of his fingers on the metal was slightly irritating. As for me, I clutched my pen and pad nervously and stood well back, following Harry at a slow pace, taking it all in carefully.

Fatal car crashes, or any car crashes for that matter, can leave a lot of debris. You wouldn't know a car could leave so many bits of indistinguishable pieces that break off in a collision with anything solid but it's true. The first thing I noticed was the ground decorated with some tiny slithers of glinting glass, white and fluorescent orange, near the sidewalk. It would all be painstakingly collected to be used in evidence against the offender's vehicle. It was likely that the victim's clothes would also be important for paint analysis to match the car to the crime scene. I traced the contact with my eyes in the glow of the police vehicles and emergency services that had arrived. There was a skid mark, brushed in lines of black. That was where the vehicle turned and braked, more bits of plastic until it had hit...

Thick gushes of blood in great smears, then a wide black circle of it, surrounded the innate body. A forensic, decked out in a dark navy plastic suit that looked more like a giant plastic bag than anything else, was squatted down on the periphery of the circle of gore taking photos. Snap, snap; bright white light illuminated the too-pale skin and unseeing eyes of the corpse.

It was a woman. Older than me; I guessed maybe in her thirties. Even in the rigid grip of death her slim, white limbs looked graceful and somehow extraordinarily delicate. There was purple nail polish on her fingernails, I noticed. It's odd what details the brain picks out at times. In the violence of her death, her attractive trench coat had been drenched in her blood, so that while it may have been originally cream or white it now appeared to be a deep maroon. One of her flat, thin shoes had been knocked off in the collision and it now had a bright yellow number next to it, an evidence identification number so that cataloguing it would be easier for the photographer and forensic team later on.

I had to swallow a deep breath; one of her legs was contorted in such a way that meant it just had to be broken and the flash of the camera had momentarily revealed the gleam of bone. It made me a little queasy but I'd broken an arm in high school and the nausea was more due to remembered agony than squeamishness. A bone was just a bone.

From where I was standing, the real sight of the injury that had killed her couldn't be seen, what with the overcast day and all the people hustling about the crime scene. That forensic photographer had a prime view of it though.

The question that had been itching away at me, glaringly prominent, seemed to be at the forefront of Harry's priorities when he left the first responders behind and walked back to meet me.

"Nobody managed to get the plate of the car," he muttered darkly. His focus switched to me. "Take your notes. We have to keep moving and search for that vehicle."

I nodded and jotted down some quick observations. The notes weren't really that necessary; I didn't think that my memory would let this scene go for a while but you never knew. I even drew a very rough sketch of the scene, most of it consisting of circles, lines and labelled stick figures to indicate where the technicians and officers had been in relation to the body. Harry got a call and I accidentally eavesdropped as I worked.

"Roxanne Dent, right... Next of kin? Alright. Current partner? Yeah. Send me through the address, if the boys are hunting that perp and their car, I'll interview." Harry glanced down at me suddenly, as though he has forgotten I was there. He rubbed the back of his neck, a classic stress signal.

I jumped, goosed a little, when he mentioned my name.

"Let the station know I have Claire with me. She can sit in unless I can get someone to drop her back."

The response must have been negative because Harry sighed and let his hand trail down his face. I was caught between a professional burning curiosity and the slight sharp edge of panic. Interviews? Next of kin? I did not want to be in the room when Harry told some poor soul that their daughter/sister/wife/partner was not coming home. Silently, I prayed to be sent back to do spreadsheets and to be able to buy chips from the vending machine with Bec. Maybe I could just sit in the cruiser.

The courageous side of me begged me to stop being such a wimp and to go get the experience with Harry. The side of me squealing like a five-year-old in a panic told me to stay the hell away from it all. But the decision was not mine to make.

"Alright," Harry noticed that I had stopped sketching and was staring at him with that battle of hope and terror playing out on my face. "She'll be with me. We'll try and keep it short. Keep Rebecca busy so they don't fall behind."

I swallowed loudly and put my things away with slightly unsteady hands. Harry met my gaze with an appraising look.

"We have to interview this woman's partner. He'll be grieving; he could be extremely against our being there and questioning him about details concerning the victim. Do you think you can handle that? Be honest with me."

The voice that replied was cool and astute.

"Psychology was one of my two majors, detective. I know what grief and shock do. As to my conduct, I will do whatever you tell me to, sir. Just say the word."

Harry was impressed. I think I had embodied Bec for a moment there and it appeared to have done the trick. He nodded, replying with a dry, "should be fine then." His tone had the distinct tinge of respect in it.

Well, look at me, building those bridges. I gave myself a mental pat on the back.

I took a final sweeping look around while Harry collected some papers form the back of another officer's cruiser. There weren't many spectators despite the plentiful buildings, but it did seem to be an industrial sort of area and from experience, they tend not to be heavily populated. I spotted a few people milling on the edge of that famous yellow police tape, easily recognisable because of the fact that they were not in some sort of uniform. The only ones that stuck out in my mind were a man in an outrageously decorated button-up shirt and jeans and an older woman with hair that reached the top of her legs in a lengthy braid down her back. None of the concrete, rectangular buildings had any kind of distinguishable markings to display what they were for, apart from one immediately opposite that appeared to proudly proclaim that it was the 'One-Stop Costume Shop - Parties and Special Events!' On the left was a mechanic's and I could only deduce that it was due to the plethora of dodgy and covered cars littered in its gates and parked just outside. It was, I summarised, a dodgy kind of place.

I considered the people, too. The officers and technicians all appeared grim-faced, doggedly professional with a hint of...anger? Resolution? That wasn't quite right but I sensed I was close. Someone had killed this Roxanne woman, by accident or by design. They'd scarpered and left her to bleed out on the icy concrete of the footpath. Who knew, with a quick and efficient call to an ambulance she may have been able to survive the collision. But her murderer had not given her that chance. He had opted to flee instead. The authorities were understandably determined to make him pay for his appalling lapse of empathy.

Harry collected me and thrust a stack of papers into my arms.

"Have a look over that in the car," he ordered, my first command on this particular errand. Probably one he'd regret later - I tend to get carsick if I read in the car. But I saw the photo of the victim on one sheaf of paper and worries about puking in the cruiser flew away.

Roxanne Dent was stunningly gorgeous. Well, she had been. So beautiful, with the easy natural look of those black-and-white silent movie starlets. Perfectly formed red lips, a heart-shaped face, long curled chocolate-brown locks. Creamy skin without a single blemish. Eyes that leaped out and devoured you. A gentle and incredibly sweet smile. Simple, elegant grace in her feminine form. Jesus. What a perfectly beautiful woman wiped off the face of the planet. My heart hurt knowing she'd never get home to her partner ever again.

I wish I hadn't scanned my eyes further down that page. She had a daughter. Oh, Jesus. There was no photo of her daughter but it was hard to imagine Roxanne having anything other than an equally stunning little girl. Her date of birth was on the paper and I did the math in my head. Roxanne was a little bit older than I'd guessed, at forty-four. Her little girl was only thirteen. I tried to push back the hard knot of sympathetic grief I felt for this family and collected the papers close to my chest. Keep it professional, Claire.

Harry and I bundled back into the sweet-scented car and drove carefully away from Roxanne's body, still visible in those flickering, pulsing red and blue lights. I kept watching their glow until we turned down onto the main road and they fell out of sight.