Free Deadly Intent by Lynda La Plante

what he was doing? Come on, what do you think? She's a poor little rich girl about to be quite a bit richer. She knows a lot more than she's admitting."
Anna shrugged. "Well, maybe you'll get more out of her when she sees his body."
"Maybe we will, Travis, maybe we will, because right now all we have is a list of vehicles from a kid with autism that might or might not give us a lead. We need one, because we have fuck all, in case you're not aware of it!"
    Anna reckoned it was best to keep her mouth shut. Cunningham was not someone she wanted to tangle with at this stage of the investigation.
    It was half an hour before Julia Brandon rejoined them. She was dressed in a Chanel suit and high heels, her hair swept back into a pleat with a comb. Anna noticed she also wore a very large square-cut diamond on her ring finger and diamond-stud earrings. She had a pink-and-gold designer handbag that must have cost around four or five hundred pounds. Her makeup was immaculate and she seemed very much in control of her emotions. She insisted on calling her financial adviser, which took another ten minutes as she quietly gave him the details of why she needed him to meet her at the mortuary. She also spoke to Mai Ling about the children.
    It was almost an hour before they departed. Anna helped Julia into the back of the patrol car. Cunningham sat in the front seat with their driver. Throughout the wait, she had been on her BlackBerry. Anna could barely get a handle on her. She seemed to behave as if there was no one else around and paid little attention to the well-dressed widow.
    When they reached the mortuary, a smartly attired, rather polished man was waiting. He had a deeply tanned face and his balding head was almost as shiny as his flamboyant tie. As soon as Julia saw him, she gave a light cry and ran toward him. He held her in his arms, comforting her. Then Julia broke away from him, but still held tightly to his arm. She introduced him.
    "This is David Rushton."
    Rushton held out his hand to shake Cunningham's. She then wafted her hand to Anna, and he looked at her with a woeful expression.
    "This is a terrible thing. I'm hardly able to believe it," he said. He asked if he could accompany Julia to see her husband's body. Cunningham agreed and, taking Anna to one side, told her to deal with the viewing as she had calls to make.
    Anna hoped that the terrible injuries to Frank's face had somehow been fixed. The three of them entered the cold, bare room where a mortuary assistant was waiting. Rushton guided Julia toward the body.
Anna stood to one side and quietly asked Julia to look at the body, and say if it was Frank Brandon.
Julia clung onto Rushton as the cloth was eased away from her husband's face. She stared down; her face was drained of color, her breath coming in short sharp hisses.
"It is Frank, isn't it?" she whispered.
Rushton held her gently and nodded.
Anna guided them out of the room, still feeling that it was unnecessary to have put the widow through the process. Rushton drove Julia away in his new Mercedes, having agreed that he would return to the station later that afternoon to talk with Cunningham.
Cunningham was standing, arms folded, in front of the incident board as everyone gathered. By now Anna had met three of the team: DS Phil Markham, who was a big, square-chested man with iron-gray hair, an old pro; DC Pamela Meadows, who was pleasant enough, with bad acne; and DC Mario Paluzzo, a part-Italian, swarthy-faced officer who had hardly given Anna the time of day.
"Right, everyone, listen up. We're doing quite well tracking down the owners of these vehicles. So far we don't have any with a police record, but we'll be running them by the Drug Squad in case they have any information that's not on the database. As you can see, we still have around twenty more to track down, so maybe one of those will give us a lead that'll tell us what he was driving—or who.
"We don't know what work our victim was doing, or who