STARSHINE, THE OCEAN AND THE UNICORN
Chapter three                                                                                                          Part five              



                    Joe paid the cab driver in Wardour street and walked the rest of the way home.  He felt the warmth of his tears mingling with the cold rain that ran down his face.  He could not numb his senses and forget as he had planned to.  He was sinking in blood and afraid to drown.  His brain was tired and crazed with thoughts of the three dead men, his own two bloodstained hands and his one soul imprisoned in its own guilt and waiting for the gallows.  In a moment of clarity he realised that Jason and the chinamen were in fact administering a torture, but the realisation was soon clouded with sheer exhaustion that finally brought on the feelings of remoteness he had been looking for and at last his soul was blank and his senses were dazed as he climbed the stairs.  He had found oblivion.
                  The light was still on in his room and another visitor was waiting for him.  It was Roy.
                  " Hello Joe.  I've been waiting ages for you.  I came on in because the light was on and the fire and everything. " What 'appened to the door ? "
                   Joe gave no answer and Roy did not seem to need one anyway.  Roy got up from the chair beside the electric fire.  He still looked pale and thin but there was a light in his eyes that smiled a little and his movements were quicker and sharper.  Roy's sick and wasted body was kindling sparks that Joe had thought long dead.  Joe sat down on the end of the bed and tried to hide his weariness for his brother's sake.
                " So what are you up to bruvver ?" he said.
                 " Just thought I'd come and tell ya the good news."  Roy filled the kettle and spooned instant coffee and sugar into two mugs.
                 " Oh yeah ! " said Joe " Tell me, I could do with some."
                  " I've got a place in a clinic.  Start tomorra.  I wanna get off.  I really wanna get off and I'm goin' ta get off. "  Roy was smiling insanely.  Joe believed he would succeed and was happy for him.
                   Roy's news was good and Joe wondered whether he should share his own good news  of a frail godmother and an inheritance of three million pounds and a weird house.  How everthing that now applied to their lives would not apply in future.  How the noise of Soho would be the stillness high up on a hill.  How the grind of the streets would be the freedom of the wind in the grass.  And so Joe's mind was journeying on through valleys and fields when he said
                 " No more apples ! Bernie Summers is dead ! "  He was brought back by his own voice saying the words.  But he had not thought those words so maybe he had not said them.  He tried hard to remember.  He knew the words had been spoken and understood when he saw his brother's face in front of his own, looking into his eyes as if he were looking in through a window that Joe was looking out of.    
                    The two brothers sat beside each other and drank coffee.  They were sad, they were frightened and they lost each other in the silence.  Then Roy spoke, his voice was quiet and bitter with pain.
                 " There's a note for you on your pillow.  I didn't think it meant anything.  But now I see it does."
                Joe turned and looked at the note.  It was creased where it had been folded into four, but now it lay open on his pillow.  He recognised the hand writing.  Joe had not noticed it before leaving with Jason, so he guessed while he had been carrying out one murder Jason had come back and left instructions for the next;
                                       Arrange a meeting with Jack O'Neil.
                                       He drinks coffee, black with two lumps
                                       Here's one of the lumps.
Joe ran his fingers under the pillow and found a red ring box.  He opened it and inside was a wrapped sugar lump.  The lights went out.  Joe closed the tiny, hinged box, put it back under his pillow and lay on the bed.  Roy did not move.  There was a rapid clicking as the electric bars cooled and contracted.
                Joe dozed fitfully.  He woke up feeling cold, kicked off his shoes and climbed under the blankets.  Roy still had not moved from the corner of the bed.  His presence, his grief and his heavy heart filled the room and held Joe back from sleep.  Roy sat motionless like a dark shapeless statue, his swollen unflowing tears all turned to stone.  Sleep crept its way back through Joe's exhausted body.  The next time he woke the statue had gone and Joe wept as he had wept so many times in his childhood when Roy had looked inside him and found something bad.
                Joe drew the blankets around him close and tight so that they hugged him and he rocked himself gently like a small boy whose face was always dirty and whose knees were always grazed.  He remembered his mother's handbag on the kitchen table and the brown wage packet sticking out of it, its top ripped open and a thick roll of crisp money inside.  He remembered the joy rushing through him because Roy wanted a bike and he could get him one and surprise him.  So he stuffed the wage packet in the waist band of his short trousers and pulled down the knitted jumper that was unravelling from the bottom.  He ran like crazy to the bike shop, handed over the wage packet and picked out the most beautiful bike he had ever seen, all shiny with red paint and chrome and masses of silvery spokes and clean black tyres with deep treads.  He rode it home, his legs barely stretched to the pedals.  He struggled to get it in the lift, it was heavy and awkward and he had to rest the front wheel against the wall to fit it in.  On the fith floor he wheeled it out backwards and rang the doorbell.  His heart was thumping and his face was breaking with excitement.  Roy opened the door and looked at the bike.  Joe could hear his mother crying in the kitchen.  He never got the chance to tell his big brother that the bike was for him.  Roy whacked the smile off his face and said quietly,
               " So you've got a bike ! And what do you, me, Tim, Bessie and Mum get to eat this week ? "
                 His mother screamed at him, dragged him in by his ear, pushed him in the bedroom and pulled a cupboard over the door outside.  She took the bike back to the shop where kind old Mr. Phillips had been waiting for her with the full wage packet still intact.
                  Joe cried softly into his pillow and wished there was a bike that could be taken back to the shop and a kind old Mr. Phillips that could give back the wage packet.  But there was neither and there was not even Roy who had always been there to put him right.  Joe loved Roy but Roy had gone and Joe had lost him.











   









                                                                          

                                          STARSHINE, THE OCEAN AND THE UNICORN
Chapter three                                                                                                             Part four


                   Whether they did or not was yet another secret, so Joe forgot it.  Then he got to thinking that maybe he was still alive because somebody just happened to liked him.  Some big chink, some mandarin type overlord at the top of their pagoda thought that he might shape into something and be useful to them.  Or was he being led a dance ? Had his mistaken murder in the warehouse been planned by another ? Was it a sly move to make his quota of killings  up to seven instead of six ?
They were crossing Westminster bridge and although he could not see it, he was aware of the river's dark, heavy flow and it scared him.  He felt less vulnerable when they were on solid ground again in the shelter of the block of buildings and the many streams of traffic round the Elephant and Castle. But fear was never far from him, like a dark spectre whose presence Joe was growing used to.
                The car ran smooth and fast down the Brixton Road.  It turned off into a residential street of victorian terraced houses, each with a pocket handkerchief garden and a lighted bay window.  Joe sat back and closed his eyes, he felt the car change direction as it turned ninety degrees in and out of identical streets.  Then it stopped.
               " Get out ! " said Jason.
                The cube of muscle on Joe's left opened the door and got out, Joe followed.  The chinaman got back inside the car and Joe was left on the pavement beneath a streetlamp.  There was a faint electronic whine as Jason opened his car window.  He handed Joe a cylindrical package wrapped in polythene.
               " Be gentle with it son, it's a bomb !" said Jason.  Without having taken the package from Jason, Joe found that it was in his hands and without listening to Jason, Joe was still hearing his instructions,
               " Blue metro outside thirty-four Chantry Road, two streets down from here.  There's some tape in the pack.  Tape the bomb underneath the car, near the driver's seat.  It's timed for when he leaves for work.  You've got exactly ten minutes."
                 Joe was looking at his watch when the black car window rose again and the long limo drove off.
                 Chantry Road was another quiet , snug little road of terraced houses.  The gardens were longer and there were garden paths and clipped hedges.  Joe sat deep in the bushes of a garden three doors up and on the opposite side of number thirty- four.  The boot of the blue metro was open and the west indian with the full head of hair and the moustache was packing.  There were cases and bags and a small trunk on the ground at his feet, all waiting to be jammed into the little car.  The guy was not going to work to take up his shift that night.  The disappearance of his work mate had made him  nervous and he was running.  Joe guessed he would drive to the airport and catch a plane that would fly him many thousands of miles away where he could start afresh on the proceeds of his misdemeanour and Joe wished the guy could have made it but for the sake of his own life he was not going to let him.  Joe had no watch and no idea how many minutes were passing as the west indian packed and repacked his car.  Joe was still carrying the bomb and the luggage was not going to fit into the metro.  Joe began to sweat.  He carefully unwrapped the bomb.  He had never seen a bomb before but he began tearing lengths of tape from the reel anyway and attaching them over the small device in readiness.  He held his breath to try and steady his hands, but his palms were clammy and his fingers felt like sausages.
               The security guard finally wedged two of the cases in the back seat.  He closed the boot softly but left the car door open.  He glanced about him fearfully as if he could feel fate stalking him and expected it to appear before he could escape.  He walked back up the garden path and into the house.   Joe moved like lightening.  He strapped the bomb quickly and delicately to the underside of the car, right on the edge beneath the drivers seat.  He left the polythene wrapping and roll of tape underneath the car and rolled away, minding his head on the open car door.  Then he slunk back into the shadows and took cover behind the dark, wet foliage of another garden hedge directly opposite.  He peered through the leaves and saw the man reappear and get into the driver's seat.  Then a woman with a carrycot appeared and closed the front door behind her.  Fear spread through Joe like hot fire.  He watched the woman as she started down the path and in his silent hysteria he grabbed a large stone from a rockery and hurled it over the hedge.  His madness was quick and strong like a catapult and the rock landed with a loud thud about four feet from the woman.  It stopped her in her tracks.  Her husband opened the car door but he did not get out before the explosion.
                  The metro was a black frame filled with fire.  Joe could see the woman's large and petrified eyes as she stared into the dancing yellow and amber light.  He could hear the baby's faint crying behind the roar of the flames.  Then doors wee flung open and neighbours ran out.  The crowds and commotion were instant.  Joe joined it and worked his way steadily back to its outskirts and then unnoticed, he was lost to the night.
                  He was back in the street where Jason and the chinaman had dropped him when the widow's screaming filled the sky and Joe started to run.  He came out onto the Brixton Road.  He stood and watched as the various sirens and flashing lights of emergency vehicles swept past him.  When they had turned off the main road the rest of the traffic pulled out from the sides and continued normally.  Joe hailed a black cab, it drew up and he jumped in.
                " Soho, please mate ! "
                " Where abouts ? "
                " Wardour Street will do, " said Joe, careful not to let out his address
                " Something big just 'appened then. " said the cabby.
                " Yeah ! " said Joe, sighing, " Heard a heck of a bang earlier on.  Another gas explosion I shouldn't wonder. "
                The rain came down hard and the windscreen wipers laboured hard from side to side.  Joe was glad that his fingerprints would be washed from the large stone that lay in the widow's garden.