STARSHINE, THE OCEAN AND THE UNICORN
Chapter three                                                                                                               Part three




                       It was dark and raining in Southampton.  It was five 'o' clock and the station was crowded with agitated, grim faced travellers, pushing through each others ranks in both directions, their overcoats and luggage wet with raindrops.  The train back to London was ready to pull out when  Joe ran onto the platform and opened a door that had already been slammed shut by a guard.  He found a seat by the window, collapsed into it and tried to catch his rasping breath.  He had found the right house in the right street in the right part of town and the cherry red porsche had been delivered to a smartly tailored, dark haired gentleman with a dago accent, fitting the name and description Morgan Alexander had given to him.  Joe had made some weak excuse for his extreme lateness and then bolted to miss a fight and catch a train.
               The train was moving.  Joe looked out of the window to try and see the dock lights, but all he saw was his own unclear reflection on a black background.  His hair and shoulders were wet and his face was pink with cold.  He watched large raindrops on the glass being joggled by the train's movement, occasionally one would break and run fast diagonally across thew window, leaving a watery trail behind it.
                People trapezed the gangway on their return journeys from the buffet car carrying plastic cups of hot coffee and polystyrene cartons of burghers and toasted ham and cheese sandwiches.  The thought of food crossed Joe's mind, but it was so long since he had eaten that he had forgotten the need to and anyway he had no money in his pocket so he ignored the idea and closed his eyes to think of sleep instead.
                   While he was relaxed and waiting for sleep to arrive, the euphoria  of his new found wealth sprang from a tiny core deep in the pit of his stomach and spread through him like a wave that drew him from the sea bed and carried him on its breaking surf to the highest mountain where he was gently laid down to sleep in the hot, drying sun.  The passengers around him looked up from their books and papers and crossword puzzles and they stared at the young man's sleeping face that smiled like a child.
                     He was awoken an hour or so later by the ticket collector who was leaning across and frantically shaking him by the shoulder, and again the passengers looked at him but this time more furtively because his eyes wee beginning to open and they all pitied him being brought back from wherever it was he had been.  The train rattled through fast black tunnels back to town.  Joe rested his head against the window, its tiny vibrations tingled through his skin and day dreams drew him back through their own fast tunnels of his monied future; the fun, the freedom, the generosity.  First there was Roy, he would be cured in the best, most modernly equipped clinic, a white walled country mansion somewhere in Surrey.  Then there was Annie, he would take her to Barbados where the water would be warm and the sand would be soft between their toes and the palm trees would stand and nod to a gentle sea breeze.  Then Joe remembered Jason and the fantasies turned a sour corner.  He decided to distance himself from the killings, to carry them out methodically and professionally and then wipe them from his senses and forget.  Now that he had so much to live for it was even more important to complete Jason's ugly assignments and to stay alive himself.  Having made that decision he came to the end of a cold stream of consciousness and moved straight into another that felt warm and good.  He had a godmother.



                 "I had to stop in on my godmother," was Joe's casual answer to Mr. Alexander's angry little eyes.  It was suffocating in the tiny office that was filled with cigar smoke, the scotsman's sweat and foul mouthed temper.  Joe got out fast with only a quarter of the money he had been promised and no job.  He had no need of it and being sacked was just another laugh at a way of life that was no longer his.  The cold air outside was a release.  His mind was still busy with possibilities and three  million pounds.
               He was halfway up the dank, dark stairway without any notion of having left one place and arrived at another.  He had no memory of the route in between, or buying a ticket for the underground, or the escalators slowly going up and slowly going down.  He turned the last landing onto the last flight of stairs and his heart quickened.  The meter had been empty when he had left that morning and now the weak light from the low watt bulb shone from his empty doorway.  He hesitated and his footsteps faltered.
                " Come on in Joe.  Door's open ! " The scornful invitation was Jason's and his chuckling was deep throated and snide.  Joe stood, hands in  pockets and one shoulder against the door frame.  Jason still wearing his hat and coat , sat on a chair and warmed his hands over the oranged bars of the electric fire.The wooden chair looked silly beneath his sheer mass.  " You've never been very lucky have you Joe ! "
               Joe wanted to say something of his good fortune to wipe the sneer from Jason's face.   But neither the courage or the wit found their way to him.  He felt slow and heavy and knew something bad was coming.  So he waited and it came.
                " You killed the wrong spade, " Jason's controlled chuckle grew to uncontrolled laughter and the chair looked even more precarious beneath his shaking weight.  Joe was struck.  His eyeballs seared and a fever burned through him.  He remembered the shiny shaven head of his victim and the full head of hair in the photograph.  Then he remembered the polished boots and the perfectly creased uniform trousers and in his mind's eye he saw the trousers on an ironing board and the careful precise movements of a steam iron operated by a woman's hand.  Joe dropped to his knees.  A pressure in his head tried to explode and  a high pitched whine inside his ears shut out Jason's laughter.
                When the screaming inside had left him and the fever had subsided he was drained, sucked out and his whole body was hollow.  He said " So what happens now ? ".  The question was mindless and his voice seemed to come from somewhere else.
               " You kill the right spade." was Jason's flat answer, " Now ! "
                Jason held on his hat and ducked to get through the doorway.  Joe followed him but did not feel his legs move.  Jason stopped at the top of the stairs and Joe nearly ran into his back.  " You owe me fifty pence for the electric, " said Jason.  Joe dug deep in his pocket and found a fifty pence piece.  Joe held out his hand like a huge dinner plate and Joe placed the silver, seven sided coin in its centre where it looked small and worthless.
                 The sleek black car that had cornered Joe not so long ago was parked outside the front door.  A fine drizzle was falling and the streetlamp's bold reflections glowed on the wet pavements.  The car pulled away.  Jason was in the front beside the driver who Joe recognised as the man with a silver flask in the multi-storey car park.  Joe was in the back, wedged  between two more chinamen, both square, squat and solid like cubes of muscle wearing clothes.  The car engine was noiseless.  Outside the Soho night moved silently by.  Joe had no idea where they were going.  Instead he watched the slight movement of the driver's shoulders as he turned the wheel first one way and then the other as the route zig zagged from street to street.
                 " What did the guy , do ? " asked Joe.  He was answered with more silence and a quick, blank glance from Jason.  Joe said no more.  He worked on the mysteries himself.  He did not even know whether the organisation was a Tong, a Triad or just a chinese mafia. Whatever the outfit it was it was all silence and rigidity.  Its operations ran smoothly and were untraceable because each cog acted deaf, dumb and blind to the rest of the machinery.  There were no pardons for meddlers and pilferers like Bernie and the security guard.  And Joe had just been a hireling who had jumped at the chance to make a quick ton.  Just a simple collection from a courier after the merchandise had been guided safely through customs.  Easy and safe.  But a third party had made its move and cheated and so now Joe was a blackmailed pawn back on the board as a hitman.  He wondered why he had not been hit himself.  Maybe they thought that given time he would lead them to the stash of saleable drugs and the money he had supposedly replaced with sand and monopoly notes.  But surely torture would've been more their style and more effective.  These thoughts became a whirlpool, then Joe's mind seized up and his mouth opened with a question he did not know he was going to ask.  It was an instinct, a subconscious line of thought that asked it for him.  " Know a man who wears a green gabardine coat, grey trousers and tan shoes ? "