The Dark Fear Read Online Free Page A

crumbling old pile like Oak Lodge.’ She allowed him to slide his hands upwards from her waist, so that they cupped her small, well- rounded breasts.              
                  ‘It’s only got five bedrooms. The Hall possesses about fifteen, from what I’ve read in the purchasing documentation.’ James undid the buttons on her blouse and shuddered as his fingertips alighted on the delicate lacework of Dani’s bra.
                  She turned around, leaning her body weight into his chest. ‘I never realised that you were harbouring a Lord of the Manor complex. You don’t want to prove all of Andy Calder’s prejudices about privately educated, middle class east coast Scots to be correct, do you?’
                  James smiled thinly. ‘I don’t have a Lord of the Manor complex.’ He’d managed to remove the blouse. Dani let it slip to the carpeted floor. He edged her backwards towards the only other room in the flat. ‘And can we please not talk about Andy Calder, at this precise moment?’
     
     

Chapter 4
     
     
    A stiff breeze was rolling in off the North Sea. Clouds were thickening rapidly and then dispersing once again, just as soon as they’d deposited a thin smir of rain onto the beach where the group stood.
                  ‘The concrete tank traps lie half hidden amongst the grasses that line the banks,’ Bill Hutchison explained, pointing back in the direction of the road. He was dressed in sturdy walking trousers, with a mac zipped up to his neck. His wife, Joy, was in an almost identical get-up.
                  ‘I didn’t think that the Germans were ever planning to invade this far north. Wasn’t it along the south coast of England that operation Sealion was focussed on?’ James looked at the older man with interest.
                  ‘We know that with hindsight, of course, but back in 1940, it wasn’t clear from which direction the enemy would strike. Norway had been occupied by the April of that year, remember.’
                  Dani knew from a case she’d investigated a couple of years before, that ships still set sail from the Northumberland coast to the ports of Denmark and Norway. ‘It makes you wonder how on earth the wartime government managed to fortify the coastline. We’re talking about hundreds and hundreds of miles of open beach and scrub.’
                  The four of them strolled down towards the water’s edge, where the waves were impressive. Dani suddenly wished she had Gill, her father’s dog, there with them to let off the lead for a run.
                  ‘Impossible task that it was, the war office took it extremely seriously,’ Bill continued. ‘A static system of defence was set up, running the length of the east coast. From the Thames, right up here to the Firth of Forth. There were anti-tank obstacles, gun emplacements and trench systems. The idea was to delay the invaders whilst the infantry mobilised. The Home Guard were to play a crucial part in this too.’
                  ‘But the invasion never came,’ Joy put in.
                  ‘No, but my mother always said it was the ‘dark fear’, especially in those early months of the war. It was the thing that haunted their thoughts in the dead of night; that the country would be over-run - just like poor France and Belgium. Women and children would be at the mercy of the enemy. That fear never really went away, not until the fighting was officially over.’
                  James gazed into the distance, where he could just make out the grey Edinburgh skyline and the distinctive curve of the Forth Road Bridge. ‘I hadn’t ever considered it in that way,’ he said quietly. ‘Aiden Newton told me that Langford Hall was requisitioned by the government during the war.’
                  ‘Many of the old country houses were,’