Angel Of The Morning

Chapter 2 - No running

4 years later, city of York

It was a hot summers day morning.
Ava was amidst her midday dreams on her day off when the thundering clammer of three loud knocks to the front door brought her to her senses, drawing at her anxiety.
Violet was playing and fidgeting distractedly on the carpet with puzzles amidst brief distractions to the childrens programmes on her partner Peters forty five Inch plasma television in the centre of her large white living room wall. Between writing her novel, reading another and preparing snacks for her and her son, she had been waiting for her partner Peter to arrive home from an early finish. She flushed in thought, suddenly paranoid about the thought of her father stood at the door, the same way he had done three years ago when he'd heard the unfavourable knews that she was carrying her former partner Adans daughter. He was a policeman, and she knew his ruthless knock so well she dreamed about it.
She spun downstairs in bare feet. Her hand brushed against the coffee table as she passed where the court papers for Adams custody appeal and her half completed work rota lay half way inside a drawer.
The person, or people she answered the door to were infact the police, but to her relief, there was no sign of her father. The pair before her were clad in uniform.

'Is it Ava?' Asked the blonde female officer in a kind voice. She had gentle eyes, which blinked intruigingly at Ava. Behind her stood a taller, unsettled looking man with a dark, shaved hair cut, who immediately cast his eyes across the carpet and the walls.

'Yes, that's me.' Ava replied with a pause. As a teenager she struggled with a stutter, and she felt a dreaded familiarity of shame that it was on the verge or resurfacing.

'I'm officer Beth Townsen, this is sergeant Graham Birkett.'

She lead the pair in, briefly wondering if people had begun peering out of the cracks of their curtains yet, her mind swimming with wild dominating thoughts of what step she could possibly have put out of place.

When she sat them down, the woman began smiling and waving at her daughter.

'This is Violet.' Ava smiled anxiously at the floor, her fingers entwined with each other as she childrens programmes hummed away in the background. The child smiled in great amusement at the bright coloured jackets, and pointed.

'You'll be wondering why we're here, obviously.' Began the male police officer. 'We want to ask you a few questions regarding your connection to a certain individual that we are trying to locate.'

The woman unfolded a large booklet she had been holding under her arm since she arrived and laced it out on the coffee table. Ava moved her belongings, papers, empty cups to the side table by the couch. The first photograph she showed Ava was of a man in a white shirt holding a pool queue in what looked like a country club, the second photo was a drivers license up close still. She recognised the face instantly.

'This is Markus Manderly.' Beth explained, revealing another photo, this time, of him smiling jeerily at the beach arm in arm with a young woman. 'Do you recognise him?'

Ava blinked bewilderedly, trying to remember the night that had occured many years ago on a drunken occasion.

'Yes.' She murmered hazily, her heart beat beginning to thump hard in her chest.

'Whats your connection to this man, Ava?' Graham asked, asthough I should have been obvious.

'We met at a bar. It was a chance meetinv. It was a few years ago now.' She felt her cheeks heating, her hands were gripping tighter together.

'Ava, did anything happen between you?'

'We spent the night together, yes.'

'What date was this, can you remember?'