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I can’t recall any of the drive back to my house, except nearly crashing into the electric gate in my driveway. I was on autopilot all the way home and misjudged the speed of the gate opening. My car crunched up the white pebble driveway to the door and I turned off the ignition and sat staring into space for several minutes before prying myself out the seat and trudging into the house.
Inside the vast hallway, big enough to park three cars, I threw my jacket on the floor and walked through the door on my left into the sitting room. The drinks cabinet, a six-foot tall walnut clad centrepiece was opposite the marble fireplace, and I jerked it open. I knew what I’d find inside. Like a gambler hopelessly betting against the house, I acted with eternal optimism rather than practical realism.
I really wanted a drink. The Weasel, the name of my alcoholic urges, needled at me to surrender to my sweet mistress. The drinks cabinet was empty – purposefully so. Although I could manage my temptations better than any time in the previous eighteen months, I had made the decision to banish booze from my house. I’d fallen off the wagon a few times in the previous eighteen months driven by the guilt of killing my brother but, since discovering that he’d meticulously planned a pantomime murder for me, I was liberated from that remorse.
But that day, I was sorely tempted. I felt wholly responsible for enabling Lexi and Cassandra’s attack on the NHS. I had put Olly in the line of fire. And worse of all, I was alone. Odell wasn’t even returning my calls – had he found out the truth about me already and cut me off?
I didn’t bother to close the drinks cabinet, but sulked upstairs and took a long, hot shower until I felt my skin burning. The shower was too hot, as it happens, and I lay on my bed, naked except for my towel round my waist, to cool down.
***
I woke with a start.
Dammit!
How could I have been so stupid! I must have dozed off after the shower. There was no time to waste if I was to somehow unpick the catastrophic attack that Lexi had coordinated.
I jerked my head over to the pulsating red lights of the bedside clock. It was 5 PM. I hunted around for my mobile and found it on the bathroom shelf beside the sink. There was a text message – which I ignored – and a voicemail.
I dialled the voicemail, simultaneously hunting around for pants and socks.
“This is a message for Mr Black,” said a crisp business-like voice with all the emotion ironed out of it. “I’m the Charge Nurse at the cardiology unit at Blackpool Hospital. Odell Jackson was brought into hospital this morning following a heart attack. He gave us your contact details and asked you to come in. He’s in Ward number...” She reeled off a stream of details.
My heart jumped into my throat and I shivered, boxer shorts halfway up my legs and a pair of socks stuffed between my teeth.
Dammit!
I dressed quickly, putting on the first clothes I found in my closet, while turning over in my mind what I could have done differently to look after him. I’d been with him on Thursday when he’d collapsed playing squash, but he was adamant that he didn’t need looking after. He said he’d take it quiet this weekend.
“Some friend you are,” I told myself. I should have checked in on him more often.
Of course, I’d been distracted by the events at the water tower, but Odell was my closest friend and I’d failed him. Now, he was seriously ill in a hospital.
A prickle of fear slithered up my spin, like a snake gliding towards its prey.
I listened to the voicemail again.
Odell was in Blackpool Hospital. Olly had told me the specialist cardiology unit for the whole of Northwest England was at that hospital. I looked at my watch. That hospital was about to be hit by a cyberattack in a little under seven hours.
I exceeded the speed limit all the way to the hospital, berating myself for being a thoughtless friend. His wife was away in New Jersey, and he’d told the Charge Nurse to call me. That’s how much I meant to him – I was Odell’s next of kin after his wife. And how had I repaid that loyalty – by lying through my teeth for eighteen months. A bolt of guilt flashed through me.
The smell of cleaning products and bland hospital food filled the stuffy corridors as I marched through the pastel-coloured ward. He was asleep when I eventually found his single-bed room. The off-white hospital sheets were pulled up to his neck, but half a dozen cables protruded from underneath and snaked through the safety bars on the bed into a portable monitor.
I looked at the monitor before looking at him. It beeped gently and the thin green line that traced his heartbeat repeated a consistent pattern of lines and peaks. I couldn’t understand much of what the monitor showed, but the waveforms were consistently repetitive.
I sat down beside Odell in a low PVC upholstered eggshell blue seat and put my hand on his. It was cold. Thin transparent tubes brought oxygen from the wall sockets to prongs balanced under his nostrils and the bedsheet moved up and down as his large chest expanded and contracted.
Being back in a hospital brought unwanted memories of my hospital stay after the car crash that killed my brother. That time, Odell had been the one to visit me. I closed my eyes and leaned back on the high-backed chair, listening to the comforting, rhythmic beep-pause-beep of the monitor that proudly announced Odell still lived. Eighteen months ago, I’d made the most dramatic decision of my life, expecting to slip into the shoes of a businessman. Instead, I found myself out of my depth at the helm of a criminal bank. The man who got me through lay asleep beside me – he’d taken care of me in his calm, fatherly way. Even then, I’d lied to him – telling him that post-traumatic stress had caused amnesia.
This time, I would be here for him. But I needed to tell him the truth – I needed to reveal my true identity. Would he want anything to do with me after that?
“Good evening, Sir.” The brisk voice of a scrub-clad nurse snapped me from my thoughts.
“Hello. Sorry, I didn’t hear you come in.” I nodded to Odell. “How is he doing? What happened?”
“He’s stable now. He has a heart arrhythmia and experienced a cardiac arrest this morning while out shopping. The supermarket had a defibrillator on the premises and a trained first aider used that to reset his heart rhythm.”
“What happens now?”
“He needs an operation. As well as the arrhythmia, he also has a build-up of fatty deposits in the arteries to his heart.” She looked at her nurse’s watch clipped onto her breast pocket. “He’ll be taken in for surgery in a couple of hours.”
I checked my watch too. In five hours, the hospital would be in chaos. “An operation? What happens if he doesn’t get it?”
She frowned at me, misunderstanding my meaning. “He needs the operation. That’s why it’s being done so quickly. Don’t worry, Sir, it’s a standard procedure called a coronary angioplasty operation. The coronary arteries are restricted by fatty deposits and that’s restricting the blood flow to and from the heart. The surgeon will use a tiny balloon to stretch open those narrow arteries. They’ll probably put a stent in at the same time to keep the artery open and allow blood to flow more freely.” She smiled. “There’s nothing to be concerned about. Your friend will be much better for it.”
“Thanks. That’s reassuring.” I stared in a daze at her.
“Can I get you a cup of tea, Sir?”
“No thanks.” I nodded to the sink in the room. “I’ll just get myself some water in a minute.”
The nurse shook her head. “I’ll get you a bottle of water. We had an issue with the water supply over the weekend. Nothing to worry about, but we have been told not to drink the tap water for twenty-four hours. I’ll be right back.”
A knot tightened in my stomach. I knew all about their water issue.
As she left the room, Odell opened his eyes and looked over at me. “I thought I heard your voice, Peter. Thanks for coming. Last time I saw you in a hospital, you were in the bed.” His voice was weak and wheezy.
I squeezed Odell’s hand and a lump formed in my throat. My closest friend was waiting for a life-saving heart operation, in a hospital about to be hit by a crippling cyberattack.