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“Are you crying, Peter?” Odell struggled to turn over in his bed and look at me. His voice had lost its customary professional confidence. “I’m the one on a hospital bed about to have urgent heart surgery – I should be crying.” He reached out for my hand. “I’ve never seen you cry before – never!”
I pushed my thumb and forefinger into my eyes, wiped away the tears, and smiled awkwardly at him. For the last eighteen months, in every action I had considered what my brother would have done. Now, I didn’t care if Odell saw the real me. I rubbed my nose on my sleeve and then looked around for a tissue. “I’ve had a difficult few days – it’s all caught up with me.”
“Anything I can do?”
A fresh wave of tears boiled out my eyes and I struggled to breathe through my sobs. Even in his condition, Odell was asking how he could help me. I lost the courage to tell him the truth – but I knew I had to. “I’ve felt pretty isolated the last few days. Cassandra is out of control and I have no one to turn to.”
“I’m here.”
“You’re in hospital. I don’t want to burden you with this.”
Odell felt for the bed controls and raised the bed so he was reclining. “It’s no burden, and if it’s to do with Cassandra, then it’s both our problems. Anyway, I’m strong as an ox. I’m kept alive by this oxygen supply and wired up to this heart monitor. As long as these machines keep running, I’ll be fine.”
I gulped. Boy, did Odell know how to pick his words! “That’s the problem actually. Cassandra and Lexi have been working together on another cyberattack. The one at Warbreck was just the start.” I paused. “Their true target is this hospital.”
Odell stared at me, like he was looking through me. “You’re going to have to explain that to me.”
I wiped my eyes and blew my nose, buying time to gather my thoughts. “Everything Cassandra told us was a lie. She was never in Lexi’s debt, Lexi never whipped her back, and the Warbreck Tower was only required to trigger the main attack.” I buried my head in my hands. “That’s why I’m crying – Cassandra’s betrayed me, and I never saw it. Because of that you’re lying in a hospital that’s about to be crippled. And to make matters worse, Lexi’s put a hit out on Olly Williams, the guy who helped me sort out Warbreck.”
Odell whistled and closed his eyes. “Typical. I knew something was up with Cassandra. Her greed has got the better of her. Probably she didn’t appreciate you trying to reign her in. She wanted bigger scams and more money – and Lexi’s given her that opportunity.”
I washed my face at the sink and took a minute to calm myself. I filled Odell in on all the missing details. I told him everything, except the one big deception – my true identity. How was he going to react to that? I shuddered when I thought about the consequences.
“So how did you find out about the hospital?” Odell asked.
“Olly called me in a panic this morning. He was being chased by two stooges – and there was only one person who could have set that up.” I explained my confrontation this morning with Cassandra and Lexi, and how I finally heard the truth about the legionella reporting system and how Lexi had identified a convoluted way to penetrate the NHS security. “When the water pressure into the hospital drops below a certain level, they have a backup reporting system which comes online. That happened on Saturday and the legionella reporting runs every weekday at midnight until it’s turned off. When it runs tonight, it will infect the hospital network.”
Odell whistled deeply. “The whole hospital?”
I hesitated before answering. Something Lexi said niggled at me. “Lexi said the whole network would be infected, but Cassandra reminded her it was only the fresh water supply. I don’t know, Odell, but I’m not sure what to believe right now. The two of them have lied through their teeth to me.” The irony of my words wasn’t lost on me. If I was Pinocchio, my nose would have grown enormous over the last eighteen months. I paced across the room.
“They sure do make a formidable pairing – Cassandra’s greed and Lexi’s reliability,” said Odell. “Cassandra might leave our firm and take our clients. You know, she has close relationships with some of them and runs all the Trade Deals.”
I waved my hand away. “I’m not worried about the firm or the money. I’ve had less. I never even wanted this much. Right now, we need to stop the attack – not least because you’re in here!”
“Amen to that! I was always against this job, and that’s when I thought it was just a water tower. Now it’s the NHS that’s the target – it’s totally unacceptable.” He looked at me. “Whatever it takes, we need to put a stop to Cassandra. It’s gone too far this time.” He sighed and lay back with his head on the pillow. “Thanks for telling me this, Peter.” He opened his eyes and gave me a hard stare with his dark eyes. “You can tell me anything, you know.”
This was my moment to come clean. Odell was inviting me to open up. I could reveal who I truly was. I cleared my throat and stood up, pacing up and down beside his bed. Revealing my true identity might lose me a friend, he might leave Janus Angelica, or even start blackmailing me like Cassandra threatened.
But I’d had enough of living the lie. This time, I was going to do it.
I took a deep breath. “Nearly two weeks ago, we had dinner at your gym after Cassandra told us her original plan. You told me that I was a changed man. You said I was going soft and didn’t stand up to Cassandra. Two years ago, you said, I wouldn’t have batted an eye lid at this sort of job.” I looked at him for any tell, but he didn’t give anything away. “You’re my closest friend. I can’t trust Cassandra, and everyone thinks I’m someone I’m not. You’ve always been there for me.”
I stopped pacing and pulled the egg-shell blue seat closer to the bed and sat down so that my eyes were the same level as Odell’s. This was the moment when I’d come clean. How would Odell react? He owed me nothing and might take my revelation as an opportunity to leave.
Odell, his dark eyes still burrowing into mine, opened his mouth to speak. I held up my hand.
“Wait. I need to say this now or I might never.” I took a few calming breaths. I looked round to check the room was empty.
“The truth of the matter is that I am not Peter Black.” I paused, looking at his face for a flicker of recognition or surprise.
His face was motionless, so I continued. “I’m John Black, his twin brother. Peter was the one who died in the car crash in Wales, and I made a snap decision to take his place.”
Odell didn’t speak, and I filled the silence with a rambling monologue. “I’m sorry I didn’t tell you. If I could go back in time and do it differently, I would. You deserve better than this and I shouldn’t have lied to you. You’re my best friend and the only person who I can trust. I just couldn’t find the right time to tell you the truth. And then months went by and I just couldn’t do it. But this whole issue with Cassandra and Lexi showed me who I can trust...”
Odell smiled at me and held up his hand for me to stop. “Thank you for telling me. But this isn’t news to me. I suspected from day one, when I sat in the hospital bed beside you. You are physically very similar to your brother, and your story of post-traumatic amnesia was just about believable. But I suspected something was amiss right at the start. Hell, when you blurted out your true feelings about the Warbreck job to Lexi at Thorton Manor, I threw you a lifeline. And that wasn’t the first time I covered for you.”
I opened my mouth, but no words came out. If he suspected, why didn’t he tell anyone? He could have surely used that knowledge to his advantage.
“You’re wondering why I didn’t tell someone, aren’t you?”
I nodded.
“I wanted to see how you got on, and whether you were any worse than your brother,” Odell drawled. “Most days, I like my job. It’s well paid and I have lots of freedom. The bits I really didn’t like were cleaning up after your brother. From the outset, it looked like you were easier to work with.” He beamed over at me. “And I still think you are. Anyway, remember, I only suspected at first. It was only recently that I was sure.”
“When was that?”
“I knew for sure when Ray Woods was looking for a solution to Saj Khan and he told you he was using the same idea that your brother used on the Fratelli Brothers job. The job that would have killed you.” He laid his hands out flat. “Your brother planned to use you as a disposable resource who would deliver the package to them and then kill you.”
I nodded. The realisation that my brother hadn’t brought me down to Liverpool on a mercy trip had hit home when I found this missing piece of the jigsaw. His only reason for bringing me down was to use me as a convenient pawn in his game to destroy the Fratelli Brothers. That realisation had erased the guilt and remorse I felt for my brother’s death.
Odell continued. “The look on your face when Ray told you the plan, couldn’t have been faked. And I figured that something as memorable as planning to kill your own brother would have surfaced through any post-traumatic amnesia. You genuinely didn’t know, and that’s when I knew for sure that you weren’t Peter Black.” He looked seriously at me. “Who else knows?”
“Just Cassandra.”
“Ah,” he said knowingly. “So that’s why she always gets her way. That’s a big risk then, she could always rat you out. She’s greedy and she can be vindictive. The balance of power is in her favour.”
“Don’t I know it! The only time she directly threatened to expose me was when she first discovered the truth.” I explained how Cassandra discovered the truth and tried to blackmail me shortly after I took on the role of Saint Peter. “She’s mentioned it a few times, but she’s not done it yet.”
“Has she told Lexi? Your brother and Lexi had met a few times previously.”
I shook my head. “She hasn’t told Lexi either. I was worried that she would to get her way, but she hasn’t.”
“Maybe she’s keeping it up her sleeve.”
“Yeah, I think so. She occasionally gives me a look, or says something to let me know she’s still got this nugget. It keeps me on edge! But right now, our priority is to stop her.”
“Yes-sir. You need to stop Cassandra before hundreds of lives here are at risk.”
“Including yours.”
“Don’t worry about me. I’ll outlive you all!” He chuckled and then was overcome with a coughing fit. I passed him a tissue and waited for him to recover. “I know that telling me this was really hard for you, Pet-” He stopped. “Should I call you Peter or John?”
“I’ve been Peter for so long, let’s stick with it. Also, it reduces the chance of mistakes and makes me feel less schizophrenic.”
“Ok, Peter it is. Anyways, thanks for telling me. Now get on the phone to Cassandra and tell her to stop this before someone gets hurt.”
I squeezed his shoulder and thanked him. A huge weight had been lifted from my chest and my lungs felt ten times bigger.