Back in the restaurant, Swan and Sanger now rose from their table to leave. ‘So, Alex, have you any more leads in the murder of this British officer?’
Swan explained about the possible lead on a suspect he was pursuing and he was about to travel to Portugal to liaise with the judicial police in trying to apprehend her.
Sanger showed his surprise. ‘Wow, Praying Mantis… she sure sounds like one dangerous lady’.
After checking that the rest of the money was secure on the bank, Reynolds needed a place to stay. Looking at an approaching Routemaster bus, he decided had just found it. He turned to the American. ‘I’m going to jump on this. Nice to see you again, Everard. We’ll be in touch — and don’t worry about having to bring the operation forward, we’ll manage it.’ Reynolds then left him at the pavement and jumped onto the number 53 bus, which was briefly held up by the traffic.
Just under an hour later, he jumped off, to find himself in familiar territory. The bus had stopped right outside his old drinking hole, the King’s Arms. He was oblivious of the damage this pub would sustain later in the year, from an IRA attack.
Directly across the road from the pub was the entrance to Woolwich Barracks. Its gate guardian, in the shape of a black and white Thunderbird surface-to-air missile, stood poised at a 45-degree angle on its launcher.
Reynolds halted, standing for a few moments to stare at it, then turned on his heel for the long walk down Frances Street. As he walked, he craned his neck to view two landmarks in the distance. The nearest one was the British Hospital for Mothers and Babies, where he had been born, the second building was his old primary school, Woodhill.
Coming to a pink-bricked tower block, he entered the lobby and was pummelled by three boys, eager to get out onto the street. Their heads travelled up the six-foot mountain to the summit of blonde hair and embarrassed by their actions, they hesitantly manoeuvred themselves around him.
He silently chuckled to himself as he remembered his own excitement at the start of the school summer holidays; six weeks of freedom, blended with a little boredom, which occasionally culminated in a ride home in a police car.
Walking out of the lift, he stepped along the veranda to the third door along and pressed the bell. Through the corrugated glass, he could see a thin shape approaching. The door then swung open to reveal a face he hadn’t seen for quite a few years. He noticed a few changes that had occurred since he last saw her, her hair was now shorter and a lighter blonde than her natural colour. She looked into his eyes and stood, frozen to the threshold of the doorway. Over her bare right shoulder, he looked down the hallway where a grey-haired woman sat nursing a cup of tea and smoking a cigarette.
Reynolds grinned. ‘Hello, sis. Put the kettle on and tell mum her prodigal son has come home.’
Patricia Jarvis gave him a beaming smile and then burst into tears. In the kitchen, her mum craned her neck to see what the commotion was all about, almost dropping the china cup she was holding. She leaped up and ran towards the door, to throw her arms around her boy.
Reynolds answered her with a bear hug of his own. ‘Hello, mum. How are you?’
Elsie Reynolds was speechless as the tears came raining down her face.
His father had long gone. He was a merchant seaman, who met Elsie at a local pub after disembarking a timber freighter from the Ivory Coast, just before the outbreak of World War II. He married her, and three years later Patricia had arrived, followed almost four years after by David. Harry Reynolds had stayed around, working at the dockyard for six years before a combination of drink, rows and fights over the children — and the longing to be at sea again — took him to the Woolwich ferry and into the Royal Docks, where he boarded a brick-carrier bound for India and was never seen nor heard of again.
David and Pat had been devastated at the time, but the years went by and Pat, while working as a secretary, had met a good man who worked for the same local electronics firm. They now lived in a maisonette further down Frances Street, while David had done what he had always had wanted to do. Before getting expelled at the age of fifteen from Charlton Upper Boys School, he had signed up for the army.
After basic training, he found himself at Aldershot, trying for and succeeding in joining number 2 Parachute Regiment. Then, after a three-year stint operating in various hell-holes, he applied for SAS selection at Hereford. Wearing the famous sand-coloured beret and winged dagger cap badge, he had seen action in Aden and in central Africa, before realising that there was more money to be made by ‘going private’.
Reynolds hadn’t been back home for over six years, and sat down at the kitchen table ready for the thousands of questions he could sense coming from both women. He asked his sister about her boys, Ben and Patrick, and she informed him that he had just missed them as they had gone out with a friend.
‘I think they might have run into me downstairs,’ he chuckled. And indeed, on their return from playing, they would realise the tanned rock they had bumped into downstairs was their uncle.
‘The last time I saw them, Patrick was in a pushchair and Ben was riding on behind it,’ commented Reynolds.
‘Ben starts secondary school in September,’ said Patricia.
‘Where’s he going?’
Reynolds was pleased to hear it would be Charlton Boys Lower School.
Over a cup of tea, he updated his family on the rigours of being a mercenary and then talked about Ayesha.
Later, as he lay in bed in his old room, he started to think about the new requirements for the job in Cyprus. The evening had gone well, his nephews probing him about his former life as a soldier and asking after their Moroccan cousin. He decided he would make an effort with them, over the time he was here. There was the Rotunda Museum of Artillery up the road, he knew they would love that, or maybe they could hop on the train to the National Maritime Museum and Cutty Sark at Greenwich.
He would keep the impending mission to himself, however. As far as the boys knew, he was a security guard working out in Morocco and he wanted them to continue to think that way.
His mum had always worried, back in the day, whenever he was called back to Hereford and he hated leaving her in a state, not knowing if he would return. On Thursday, he knew that when it was time to leave for the airport, that mutual pain would agonise them both again.
He also thought about what he had said to Mo about Ayesha and in the darkness, suddenly felt the tears welling his eyes.
Chapter 12
Next day, in the late morning at Lisbon Airport, Mr and Mrs Swan were met at the arrivals hall by Chief Inspector Carlos Ferreira of the Portuguese judicial police. He was a big man, and smartly dressed in his lightweight beige suit. He sported a thick moustache.
Greeting Swan, he almost shook the Englishman’s hand off his arm. ‘Mr Swan, Inspector Carlos Ferreira, at your service, Señor.’ He turned to Janet, giving her a lecherous smile. ‘And you must be Mrs Swan? Delighted to make your acquaintance, Señora.’ He took her hand, and as he kissed her knuckles, Janet gave him an embarrassed smile.
He clicked his heels together. ‘Please, this way, I have a car waiting.’ He snapped his fingers, and out of nowhere appeared another plain clothes policeman, who grabbed the couple’s suitcase before Swan could pick it up. Laden with all the luggage, this officer trailed behind them as his boss led them outside to the car.
The journey into the city allowed Ferreira, sitting in the front passenger seat of the silver Toyota Corolla, to probe Swan about his profession. ‘So, Mr Swan, you are from British secret service, like Roger Moore, no?’