‘Who the fuck are you?’ he asked, but he wasn’t aware of his mouth moving.
‘Woah, fella!’ the stranger said, as he grabbed his hand and took a large knife from him. Paul watched him remove the weapon but couldn’t figure out how it had got there.
He’d roamed around this place, trying to break free. He remembered bits of his journey. The caves. The podcaster, was he called Joe? Jamie’s face before he fell.
The face of the man who pushed him. A robot. A man possessed by another’s hand.
This man.
The man called Melvin.
Chapter 60
Kelly hammered on the door, but nobody answered. She peered through the window which was to the side of the porch, but she saw nothing. Johnny climbed on top of a wood store and reached another window, and he said he could see no one either.
That was when Kate contacted Kelly from Eden House and said she had a warrant for the property and the tactical entrance group was on its way.
That meant she could break the fucker down.
She and Johnny hammered the door with a log each until they exhausted themselves. It wouldn’t budge. It was an oak construction that looked as though it had been standing since King Arthur, who was responsible for supplying the indefatigable Welsh timber.
Nobody was getting through it.
Then somebody shouted from the other side.
The door opened as they stood back and Kelly breathed so deeply that her chest heaved up and down.
An older man stood in the doorway and Kelly squinted as the sun was dipping over the tree canopy and shone straight into her eyes.
‘Melvin? Is that you?’ she asked.
‘It is! I wasn’t expecting you. How can I help? Come in, come in! Both of you, and who is that? Sandy! What a nice surprise.’
Kelly watched as Sandy retreated as much as she could before she backed into a stone wall. Johnny shielded the two women as was his instinctive response and Kelly peered behind Melvin into the home.
‘Is your wife OK, Melvin?’
‘No, she isn’t here. I don’t know where she is.’
‘What about Paul, is he here?’
‘He is!’
Kelly didn’t know if she was dealing with a man who suffered from dementia and his mental acuity was dissolving before their eyes, or if Melvin Stone was an automaton being directed by an invisible force inside his head, via 5G. None of the people she’d met since Jamie Robbins’ death were who they said they were; none of them were capable of telling the truth.
‘We need to come in, if we may,’ Kelly said, waiting for Melvin to make good on his invitation.
He did, and he stood back to allow them inside.
Kelly was wary and eyed Johnny, who took the lead.
The sirens had zipped straight past the hidden entrance and they no longer heard the whirring in the distance and Kelly realised that they weren’t the ones they were waiting for. Some other emergency in the Lakes had needed an ambulance this afternoon. Her stomach felt like stone, but she walked into the house and found herself in a small kitchen. It was an L-shape but she couldn’t see around the bend. She felt Johnny near her. Sandy hung about at the door.
‘You want me to cut those off? They look painful,’ Melvin said to her, noticing the cable ties.
‘She’s good, she can keep them on, Melvin,’ Kelly said. ‘Where’s Paul?’
‘I’m here,’ a voice said from around the wall. He emerged and stood in the space, way back from them. The faint whine of sirens started up again in the distance and Kelly prayed that this time it was for them.
