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.