But Not Forgotten – A Gripping Murder Mystery
A serialised novel
“I think I’m your sister. Our father is missing.”
After receiving a call from the sister he didn’t know existed, private investigator Barty Symonds travels to a village in the beautiful New Forest to find the father who abandoned him years ago.
Then someone dies, and all eyes in the tight-knit community turn to the newcomer, the outsider, and Barty finds himself not only in the role of investigator…
But prime suspect.
CHAPTER ONE BEGINS BELOW
1
Amber Buchanan put her pen to the page one final time, and then it was over.
Filing out of the hall into the summer day, the sun had never seemed brighter. With the termination of her final exam, school was done. Not just for the summer. Forever. As she linked arms with her best friends, Amber’s smile was wide enough to give her chipmunk cheeks. Her friends teased her. They knew that smile was about more than the end of school. They knew what was happening tonight.
From school, she went straight into town, spending the money her parents had given her to get something nice. An end-of-school treat. That evening, they took her out to dinner at her favourite restaurant. They would take her again on results day, assuming she did okay. Amber didn’t know if she would. Nor did she care.
Who needed good exam results when you had met the perfect man?
After dinner, Amber sat with her parents while they watched some stupid show where stupid girls get killed in stupid ways. When they went to bed, Amber’s mother suggested Amber do the same, making it clear she would be unhappy if she came home at lunch the next day and found Amber still in bed. Amber made the right noises, nodding along. She wasn’t listening because she was a teenager. Not because she knew the advice was moot.
Amber had already woken up for the final time.
In the hall outside her bedroom, she hugged her mother and kissed her father’s cheek, something she had seldom done since hitting puberty. Over the years to come, he would think of that kiss often. Usually with tears in his eyes. Often with a drink in his hand.
After the hug and the kiss, Amber entered her room and closed the door. An hour later, she slipped out of the window into the night, crossing the street and disappearing into the woods.
As a lifelong Pivert resident, Amber knew the trees as well as the corridors of the school she had recently departed for the last time. Despite the darkness, Amber weaved through the woods without colliding with trunks, tripping on roots, or tangling her clothes in branches, not stopping until she reached a circular clearing bisected by the fallen trunk of a mighty oak.
On this oak, she sat waiting for her night to begin and her life to end. As the minutes ticked by, her heart rate quickened, not with fear but anticipation. Earlier, her friends had nagged and needled, prodded and poked, desperate for some slither of information about Amber’s plans for the evening. She gave them nothing except a glimpse of what she intended to buy with her parents’ money.
How they squealed when they saw that perfect purple lingerie. They knew what it meant. Only one of the group had lost their virginity and her to a dorky kid from the year below. Even that was little more than a fumble, lasting long enough to hurt but not to experience even a smidge of pleasure. Recently eighteen, Amber would lose her virginity not to a boy but to a man.
And here he came, crushing brambles and twigs into the dirt as he strode through the trees. The sound of his approach was an adrenaline shot to the heart, causing it to pound so hard she feared the sight of him might bring on a heart attack. The excitement swelled like a symphony, but there was an undertone of nervousness. Amber was a Queen Bee among her peers, but it was not a peer who came through the trees. It was a gorgeous man with strong arms and a voice that weakened her knees until she thought she might collapse at his feet like a worshipper before a deity.
He thought she was beautiful. He wanted her. Said he needed her. How would he feel when they made love? It would be perfection for her, but she was terrified of disappointing him.
As he drew close, Amber hopped off the oak and smoothed down her clothes, feeling the hard outline of her new bra and remembering how hot she looked with her clothes off. The way her friends’ jaws had dropped when she gave them a peak. As would her man’s when he tore her clothes from her body. Then she would touch him, feeling the effect her new lingerie had had, and he would forget everything but her.
Then they would make love, and it would be perfect.
Yes. Perfect.
Moments later, he stepped through the trees, tall, powerful and shrouded in darkness. She came towards him as he stopped, clasping her hands behind her back, straightening her spine and pushing out her chest.
“Took your time.” Her voice sounded distant compared to the drum beat of her heart in her ears.
He said nothing. In four long strides, he cut the space between them to nil and grabbed her around the waist with one arm. The other came up, his hand lacing through her hair, tipping back her head.
He pressed his lips to hers.
Their previous kisses had been soft, tender. This was rougher, more eager. It might have been a less pleasant experience, but she loved this expression of how much he wanted her. How he could wait no longer to be with her. How—
“Ow.” She pulled back, breaking contact. Every time they’d kissed, he had put his hand to her hair, stroking it. This time, his fingers had knotted in it, tangled in it. Then, he had closed his fist and pulled.
“What?” he said.
She felt the heat rise in her cheeks. Way to kill the moment, Amb.
“Nothing. Keep kissing me.”
He did. Those same rough lips pressed eagerly to hers. His hand returned to her hair. This time, when he tugged, she fought the instinct to pull back, although she could not keep a groan of discomfort from escaping between their trapped lips. Perhaps he thought it was a sound of pleasure because he pulled harder. So hard that, although she managed not to yank away, she felt tears come to her eyes.
Then he bit her lip, and she cried out and pulled away. And when she touched where his teeth had dug in, she felt hot liquid.
Blood.
“Babe,” she said. “That hurt.”
That’s it, Amb, a voice chimed in her head. Now he’ll realise you’re a silly, inexperienced girl. Now he’ll walk away.
But he didn’t walk away nor respond to her words. As she’d pulled away, she’d taken a couple of steps back. He cut the space between them again. Put one hand around her waist and another in her hair again. Pulled her in for another kiss.
“Wait,” she said, but he wouldn’t wait. He dragged her towards him, and as he closed his eyes, she noticed a tear squeezing out of each one.
That was when she began to panic.
Their lips touched, but she put her palms to his chest and pushed. He was strong, and she went nowhere. She shifted as he pulled her hair and continued kissing her – even as she squirmed – managing to move her feet enough that when she drove her knee up, it found the one place he would not want her to hit.
An explosion of air from between his lips seemed to blow her back as his hands left her for his groin. As he bent at the waist, his head angled towards the ground.
Amber took two more steps back, fear coursing through her veins. Instinct screaming at her to run. If she had, she’d likely have lived. She knew the woods far better than he did.
But attraction is a more powerful force than instinct, and she did not run.
“Babe,” she said. “I don’t understand. Why did you—”
He straightened up, and she realised her mistake. But too late.
He leapt forward and grabbed her again. She tried to escape, but he pushed as she pulled, and she flew from him.
Her back hit the dirt.
Her head smashed the fallen oak.
What followed was a short, sharp burst of pain, gone in a second. Replacing it was a numb sensation that started somewhere in her skull and quickly spread throughout her body. It was like pins and needles, making Amber want to get up and jump around to stamp them out. But she couldn’t get up. Her limbs would not respond to the feeble instructions sent out by her addled brain, and a crazed voice in her mind shouted that she was paralysed. For the rest of her life, she would be known as Wheelchair Girl. Her friends would ditch her, and she would never have a boyfriend and her life would be…
Over.
There would be no need for a wheelchair.
Her man – her gorgeous man with those powerful arms – stood over her. Then dropped beside her, placing one knee on either side of Amber’s immobile body. His hands came out, and she noticed, for the first time, that he was wearing gloves.
But, her mind babbled, it’s summer. It’s too warm for gloves.
This time, rather than her waist and hair, his hands found her throat. Panic set in, even as a cold sensation swept over her. She hit him, but there was no power in her fists, and her mind wandered. She recalled her excitement when she had finished her final exam, her happiness when shopping with her friends and her contentment at dinner with her parents.
And how it had all seemed to pale into insignificance next to what was supposed to happen tonight. When she met the man who was supposed to take her virginity but who instead stole her life.
The world faded.
Amber put her hand to her attacker one final time, and then it was over.
- Chapter One
- Chapter Two
- Chapter Three
- Chapter Four
- Chapter Five
Latest posts by Mark Ayre (see all)
- Chapter Five - 24/04/2025
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- Chapter Three - 17/04/2025