Excerpt of The Hoard by Neil Grimmett

PART TWO THE CURTAIN RISES Spring 1979 CHAPTER FOUR Byron smelled salt, then felt a whiplash of it from the adjacent Dunball Wharf. A fouler stink assaulted him from the British Cellophane factory in nearby Bridgwater. It added to the mounting doubts he was having about the whole venture. He looked across the dual carriageway to the dark Greenhill Arms pub and the narrow lane leading alongside it to his cottage. Byron imagined walking back and forgetting this madness. It would be such a simple matter to have his vital possessions returned to his real home, then slip off to where he was actually supposed to be: taking in the galleries and architectural splendours of Europe with some fellow graduates. It made him wince to think how easily his mother and aunt had bought that lie; how delighted they’d been with the romance of it. Byron glared at the distant glow of the explosive factory with its shadows of fume dancing overhead. The shapes seemed to form a mockery of Michelangelo’s ‘Creation of Adam’, with their Antichrist version beckoning him on. He smiled at the notion of fleeing, knowing that’s all it was, and that he was at last here after a near-lifetime of unanswered questions about a lost father he’d never met. And how his mother had made sure he had the chance to be everything the man she had never stopped loving wanted him to be. He saw the letters from Gunner Wade that she had tried to keep hidden, particularly the last one claiming his father had not died a hero but been murdered. There was no running or hiding from that. He turned defiantly into the cold and stared as the fume ghosts danced above the factory. Heavy footsteps approached out of the darkness. Two grey- looking men arrived and glowered silently. Then Byron saw the sepia glow of the approaching factory bus. “No turning back,” he whispered to himself. “What?” one of the men asked. “I was just wondering if this was the right bus,” Byron answered. “Could be, son,” the other replied. “This is the ghost train. If you’ve got the right ticket, it’ll take you all the way to the gates of hell.”