STARSHINE, THE OCEAN AND THE UNICORN

Chapter Three                                                                                                               Part Seven



                 Joe sat in a greasy café and looked down at the weak tea in a grey-white china cup on a grey-white china saucer on a red formica table top.  Then he looked out of the glass front of the café at the clear winter's day.  The sky was a clean blue and the sun bright, but the air was freezing and the pavements were busy with fast walking people buttoned deep inside their overcoats and carrying small white clouds of breath in front of their faces.  Lunches wand were being ordered and served all around him, there was a smell of frying and the sight of plates full of egg, sausage and chips or pie, chips and peas or liver, bacon and onion.  Joe could not remember eating over the last few days, but he reckoned it was a trick his mind was playing on him because if it had been so long since he had eaten he would be feeling the need to eat, but he felt no hunger.
               Joe tried hard to concentrate. His brain reached out long tentacles in all directions to try and gather in any tiny clues and details that would make some kind of sense out of Jason's deal.  But it all got scrambled inside his head.  He found no reasons and he found no answers and when he could not even find the questions he stopped.  Because all there was was Jason's deal and he had to kill four more times or get killed himself.  Joe sipped his tea.  A calmness began to grow inside him and it grew into a decision.  He would kill, maybe easily and maybe not, but he would kill.  The decision made him happy and he was glad that Jason had not believed that he could get hold of any significant amount of money and he was glad Jason had not allowed him to buy himself out because now his inheritance could not be forfeited, it was all his and nobody knew about it and when the killings were over Joe would lose himself in three millions pounds where the dead men, the chinamen and Jason would never find him.  Joe continued to stare through the glass front of the café, but he was blind to what his eyes were seeing as his thoughts carried him even further to a realisation he had reached once before. A game was being played and he had been put on the board without being asked and he could play to win or play to lose and winning was surviving and losing was dying.  Joe no longer felt so guilty about killing. He had no choice.  He drank the rest of his tea and paid the twenty pence it cost to a greasy haired, acne ridden girl behind the counter.  He crossed the street to the post office.
                 The phone cubicles inside the post office were door less.  Joe dialled a number and pushed in the coin almost immediately as Jack O'Neil answered.  Joe was half himself again, sparky and cheerful, a fast talking wide boy.
" Hello Jack old man !  It's Joe here.  Listen ! I want to meet with you, I've got a little business proposition I think you'll like............  No, no I can't say any more on the phone.  Where shall we meet?..........  Saturday at the races.  OK I've got it.  See ya then.  "