“I doubt it.” He’d never known Elizabeth to be wrong.
She thought about this for a moment. “Leo has a history with gangs and drugs, and he tried to punch you for asking whether he was smuggling. That’s a pretty clear indicator of guilt. He didn’t want to punch you when he knew we’d come to ask him whether he’d killed Jack. In fact, he brought that up himself.”
Aye, that was strange.
“He also got a call that I think had to do with me, a call that made him want to get us off his property immediately. We assume he found out that I used to work for the Agency and reacted to that, but it could be something else.”
“Like what—your taste in music?”
She didn’t seem to hear him. “I just don’t see a man with Jack’s training turning up in an alley at three a.m. with drugs in his pocket to chat with a man he no longer trusts—unless they were dealing drugs together and he felt he had no choice.”
“What if Grant tried to push Jack into dealing drugs for him but killed Jack to silence him when he refused and then planted the drugs on him?”
“Or maybe they were conspiring together to sell drugs, and Jack somehow found out that Leo was involved with the IRA. Jack wouldn’t betray the nation he’d served.”
“He would have reported him.” Quinn knew that for certain
“Leo said he would never harm a brother, but in that scenario, he might have felt he had no choice.”
“Or maybe he no longer considered Jack a brother.”
“This is pointless. We’re just making things up here.” She walked over to the sofa, sank down onto a cushion, discouragement written on her bruised face. “If this were a job and I had the authority of Cobra and the Pentagon behind me or the cooperation of British Intelligence, we could get somewhere. As it is, we’ve got nothing on Leo and no real leads on Jack’s murder—and the police are suspicious of us.”
Quinn closed her laptop, went to sit beside her. “I could contact my buddies with MI6, tell them what happened wi’ Grant, and see what they say. Maybe they have access to records on him.”
She shook her head. “We have no evidence, not one shred of proof, no real reason to suspect him.”
Then there was no other option. “I’ll call Ava, explain that we’re gettin’ nowhere, and ask for her help getting Jack’s phone records.”
Elizabeth threaded her fingers through Quinn’s. “I thought you were against that.”
He wasn’t happy about it. “We’ve no choice. It’s like you said. Without those records, we’ve got nothin’.”
Elizabeth’s gaze was soft with sympathy. “I can speak with her if you’d like.”
Quinn nodded. “Thanks.”
He took out his mobile and called Ava.
* * *
While Quinn wentto get a dinner of fish and chips, Elizabeth sat in the hotel’s business center, printing out all of the data from Jack’s two cell phones dating back to the beginning of October—incoming and outgoing calls, text messages, data transfers, and GPS locations. Ava trusted Quinn so completely that she hadn’t asked any difficult questions, except, perhaps for one.
“The police already have all of this,” she’d asked on speaker. “Do you think you’ll find something they haven’t?”
“I won’t know until I have time to analyze it,” Elizabeth had answered. “I look at things differently from the police. They want evidence that will stand up in a trial. I look at patterns of behavior—what drives people.”
“Please find the bastard who did this. He took Jack from us. He destroyed my life and that of my little girls.”
“I’ll do my best, Ava. I promise.”
It had taken the rest of the morning and most of the afternoon to help Ava claim the phone account—she didn’t know the password because Jack had always paid the bills—and talk her through how to access the necessary data. In the end, getting the data this way had been easier than hacking the account and one hundred percent less likely to land Elizabeth in prison.
With a month’s worth of data from two phones, there were almost a hundred pages, and it took a few minutes to print. Elizabeth’s gaze drifted to the nearby TV and the news broadcast. More fighting over Brexit. Strikes at universities over pensions. A man stabbed in a car park robbery.
Then Jack’s face appeared on the screen. Elizabeth recognized him from the photos she’d seen when she’d spoken with Ava.
“There is evidence that illegal drugs played a role in the murder of former SAS trooper Jack Murray, it has been revealed. Murray, who was found dead in a Glasgow alley early in the mornin’ of November third, worked as part of the private security team of MSP Alastair Whitehall.”