TITLE: The Watcher: Absolution pt.1 - `Til You Loved Me 3/7
AUTHOR: vatwoman
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS: Joss Whedon, Mutant Enemy, UPN etc own Giles and anyone else in the Buffyverse, Anna and everyone I invent are mine.
FEEDBACK: Will be gratefully received on list, or at: vatwoman@yahoo.co.uk

When Detective Inspector Mark Conlon arrived the alley was already taped off and illuminated by the Scene of Crime Unit's lights. He was waved through the crowd and as he ducked under the tape he caught sight of the body. His face twisted. The initial call had been right - this was another one.

A flashbulb went off, momentarily blinding him. When his vision cleared he found the scene had imprinted itself on his mind's eye: the dark, wet alley; the white-garbed Scene of Crime officers; the fluorescent yellows of the uniformed officers' jackets; the flashing blue lights on the cars; the boy in the middle of it, dead, laid bare by his attacker, the blood surrounding him in a shocking pool of deep crimson; the incessant rain, a veil of silver to cover it all.

His sergeant was hovering on the edge of the scene, watching intently as the body was searched. Even as Conlon observed, he saw one of the SOCOs withdraw from the victim's trousers what looked like a wallet, show it to his sergeant and then bag it.

"Green!" Conlon projected his voice so it would carry over the drumming rain and he saw Helen Green's head come up and acknowledge him with a swift nod. She spoke a word or two more with the SOCOs and then strode over to him.

"Sir."

Conlon nodded. "What have we got?"

"Male caucasian, 19 years old, name of Michael Grove." Green paused to wipe rain off her face. "Looks like number three, sir."

"But it's a man. The other two were women."

"Yes sir, but regardless of the fact that he's been penetrated anally, whereas the women were both penetrated vaginally, Forensics say that their initial examination would suggest that the wounds have been caused by the same thick, blunt instrument. He bled out."

"When will they know for sure?"

"They're giving this top priority … they say they should have their findings for us by mid morning."

"Good, but keep on top of them." Green nodded. "Rain will have pretty well ruined the scene."

"Yes, sir."

"Do we have an approximate time of death?"

Green looked at her notebook. "A preliminary poll of the other clubbers puts him alive at 10.15pm. No-one seems to have seen him after that."

"Except when one of them fell over his body …"

"… which was about 10.45pm. The 999 call was logged at 10.49."

Conlon looked around. "No real effort to hide the body."

"None at all, sir."

"So why did it take so long to find him?"

"It's early yet."

He looked back sharply at his second in command. "Early?"

"For trysts in back alleys, sir."

"One hell of a `tryst'."

"Yes, sir." Green's tone sharpened with anger as she glanced over to where the body lay. "Sick bastard."

"You'll get no argument from me on that, Helen." Conlon sighed heavily. "Alright, let's get some details on the boy. Do we have an address?"

"It was on his driving license: the photo matches."

"Is it his parents' address?"

Green shrugged. "We don't know yet."

Conlon sighed heavily. "I'll get round there and see if there's anyone who can come in to positively identify the body. Interviews started in the club?"

"Yes, sir, and I've got people talking to the key-holders of the premises in the area so we can access their CCTV tapes. I've already bagged the club's tapes: owner is being cooperative."

Conlon pulled a face. "That's something, I suppose. The boy's address?"

"10 Taunton Row. It's one of those new places out by the rugby ground." As Conlon moved to leave, Helen Green's voice brought him back. "There's something else."

"Yes?"

"We had a report … someone came in this morning and … and … well … reported this."

"What? I don't understand."

"A member of the public walked into the local nick at Blackhill and reported that someone was going to die this evening outside this club."

"Who was this `member of the public'?"

"Adam Barry, sir."

" *The* Adam Barry?" Conlon's voice was eerily quiet.

"Yes, sir."

"He identified the boy by name?"

"I don't know, I've just found out about it."

"How?"

"How what, sir?"

" `How' the fuck is it that you've just found out about it, Helen!" Conlon's shout carried down the narrow alley, drawing the attention of the other officers around them.

Green bristled, "Sir, the constable who took the report was just going off duty when the call about the murder came in. He reported the matter to his sergeant. His sergeant has just reported the matter to me."

"I don't suppose that this constable reported the matter to the murder squad?"

"I don't think so, sir."

"No, of course he didn't." He paced away a few feet, stopped, jammed his hands into the pockets of his coat and hung his head. The rain dripped off his nose and chin onto the ground, splashing into the puddles at his feet. "Bloody hell! Bloody, fucking hell!" He turned back, his face creased with fury. "Why didn't he pass it on? Why the hell didn't he pass the report on?"

"He thought it was a crank report, apparently." Green shrugged. "It was Adam Barry, after all."

"And God help us all if he identified the boy by name." Conlon shook his head in despair, but even as he did so, in his heart of hearts, he knew that he would have treated Barry's report in exactly the same way that the constable had.

"But his reputation, sir, why should the constable have believed him? *No-one* on this force believes him. *No-one.* "

"I know," he acknowledged. "It's bad enough, these murders, but this gets out, this connection to Adam Barry, and you know what this is going to turn into?" Green nodded, but Conlon carried on anyway. "A feeding frenzy and all of us are going to get eaten by the sharks!" He dragged a tired hand down his face. "Christ … Adam Barry."

"Do you want me to go and bring him in?"

"No, I'll do it. Send Liz and Malcolm to the boy's house. Get a statement from whoever's there. If it's not the parents, find them and get them down to the morgue. Do we have an address for the `sainted' Mr Barry?"

"Not yet."

"Then would you please be good enough to get me one, Detective Sergeant?"

"Yes, sir."

Helen Green walked away to use the radio in her car. Conlon watched her disappear behind the rain's silver veil. He looked over to where Michael Grove's body lay on the ground, half naked and violated, and was relieved to see the area now fully screened off from prying eyes. Lightning flashed overhead, the rainstorm showing its hand at last, and in that spilt second of blinding light Conlon saw the boy's blood, rain-diluted, running uncaringly into the drain at his feet.

>>>>>>

Having given his driver the address, and with the two sergeants he'd brought with him swapping nervous glances between each other, Conlon sat stony-faced in the back of the car ensuring that the drive to Adam Barry's house was completed in perfect silence.

The witness report Adam Barry had filed lay on the rear seat of the car, papers scattered, thrown there by Conlon after he'd read it once more. Reading it a second time wasn't any easier even though he knew what it was going to say. In fact knowing what it said only made it worse … Michael Grove's name lifted out of the text as if it was written in neon lights.

The constable had pleaded just cause - when had anyone believed anything Adam Barry said - as had his sergeant, his inspector and his union representative, called in when Conlon had him suspended on the spot.

As shark bait went, the report was perfect. The `who', the `when' and the `how' of it all neatly typed up - double spaced in Times New Roman - on official police issue witness statement paper. It was probably going to fuel the prosecution of at least three police officers and finish the careers of a dozen more.

And yet the `how' of it ran contrary to everything that Conlon understood about the world in which he lived. For Adam Barry had said that the killer was not human, and when he'd been asked for clarification of this statement he'd said only that his words should be taken literally. There was a crude drawing of a horned beast beside this portion of the text - added by the constable after Barry had signed the statement because, he said, this was what Barry had meant. Conlon had added `tampering with a witness statement' to the charges that were to be brought against the young police officer.

Barry had falsified his statement to the police, delivering to them a swathe of nonsense designed to keep them from the truth. A truth that Conlon was going to expose: Adam Barry killed the boy and the two women dead before him.

The car drew to a halt. "We're here, sir."

"Gentlemen?" Conlon gathered up his officers.

The house was an unprepossessing 1960s semi-detached: the tidy lawn and white pebble-dashed walls typical of the times. The house was in darkness, but a security light came on as they were half way up the path, bathing them in its arctic white light. Conlon pressed the doorbell, holding it in for a count of five and then stepped back. As he waited for a reply he reached into his coat pocket, drew out a pair of leather gloves and put them on. Glancing over his shoulder, he saw that his officers had followed his lead, and were gloving themselves.

Still no reply. Conlon rang the doorbell once more.

"Do you think he's in there, sir?"

"Yes."

At Conlon's word, a light came on in the hallway behind the front door. They heard the rattle of the safety chain being removed and the door opened.

Conlon had forgotten how small Adam Barry was, probably no more than five and a half feet and slight with it. The straw coloured hair was shot through now with grey. There were lines on his face; his brow and the skin around his eyes were deeply furrowed. But the eyes … the eyes hadn't changed at all, they were still the icy pale blue that Conlon remembered from years gone by.

"Adam Barry?"

"Yes."

Conlon flashed his identification. "Detective Inspector Conlon. Would you mind coming with us?"

Adam frowned. "Where?"

"To the station."

"Why?"

"I'd like to ask you a few questions about a statement you gave to the police this morning."

"Ah … I'm sorry, I'm not normally so obtuse, Inspector." Adam's face fell. "He's dead, isn't he?"

"Who, sir?"

"Michael Grove."

"Yes, he is, and I'd like to talk to you about it."

"Is this what's euphemistically known as `helping the police with their enquiries?' "

"No, sir, it's what's *actually* known as helping the police with their enquiries. I'm hoping you'll come to the station voluntarily. As you did this morning."

"This morning no-one was interested in what I had to say about the boy."

"Well, now we are."

"I'm sure. Could you wait for a moment, please." He indicated his pyjamas and robe. "I'd like to get changed."

"Certainly." As Adam turned away, Conlon stepped into the hallway, not giving the other man the chance to close the door on him. The two officers stepped into the house behind him.

Adam stopped with his back to them, took a deep breath and turned around. Conlon watched realisation dawning on the man's face. Adam's eyes dropped and Conlon looked down too, following the line of the other man's gaze. The gloves.

"What do you want, Inspector?"

"I want you to co-operate with me."

"I repeat - what do you want?"

Conlon was glad that Barry wasn't perturbed by the turn of events; it meant he could drop the pretence. "What I want is permission to search your home; permission to take away whatever I want for forensic examination; permission to obtain DNA and blood samples from you. And I want you in my interview room answering truthfully any and all questions I choose to put to you."

"Am I under arrest?"

Conlon merely shook his head.

>>>>>>

"Let's go through this again, shall we?"

"What for? It's not going to change any from the last time I told you! Or the time before that! Or the time before that!" Adam propped his elbows on the table and rested his head on his fists. "I've told you everything I can; there's nothing more I can say."

"There's always something more, Adam, you know that as well as I do." Helen Green, behind him, leaned against the wall of the little interview room. "Let's go through it again. You and Michael Grove got into a fight …"

"… he attacked me …"

"… he beat the shit out of you …"

"… he was scared …terrified …"

"… so you decided to get your own back …"

"… so scared … I didn't mean to … it was an accident …"

"… of course it was an accident …"

"… yes … an accident … I was stupid … clumsy."

Conlon took over, "… I know …you just meant to teach him a lesson … show him who's the boss … who's the top …"

"… what?"

"Pretty boy like that." Steven Malcolm, Conlon's other detective sergeant. "Should know his place … good for putting it out, but he doesn't get to put it about, does he, eh?"

Adam looked up, red-eyed with tiredness, completely bewildered. "What are you talking about?"

"You've been grooming him. You wanted him all to yourself and then he turned around and bit the hand that'd been feeding him. There he is at the club, showing off the goods to all those other men and you just couldn't stand it, could you?"

"How'd you get him outside, Adam?" Helen asked. "Money? Or maybe it was just your winning smile."

Adam spun around in his seat to face her. "It wasn't me! I wasn't there! How many more times have I got to tell you that - I wasn't there!"

Conlon's hand slammed down on the table. Everyone jumped. "So how is it that you gave such a detailed description of the murder? How could you have possibly reported the murder hours before it happened, if it wasn't you who then went and killed him exactly as you'd described? How, Mr Barry?"

Adam hung his head again. "I saw it."

"Clairvoyance? No, no, no, Adam. I'm sorry, but we just don't believe you."

"Then get your head out of the dark ages, Inspector!" The eyes were suddenly on Conlon, frigid white. They made him look, to Conlon, like an otherworldly creature, something from the covers of the lurid pulp science fiction novels that his sister used to read when they were kids. "You want a demonstration, is that it?"

Adam slowly pushed his hands out from inside the sleeves of his sweater and felt the tiny hairs on his hands and wrists stand on end as they reacted to the coolness of the air in the room. The three police officers seemed frozen in place, unable to move, caught between reacting and not reacting to what he was doing. Moving away from him would make liars out of them. He stretched out his right hand until it hovered a matter of millimetres over the surface of the wooden table at which he and Conlon were seated.

"You remember what it was like for me at school, don't you, Mark?" He smiled when he saw Conlon start in surprise. "Did you really think I didn't recognise you?" Still smiling slightly, he looked down at his hand. "Do you remember how I couldn't touch people? It made me scream. Do you remember? Do you want to know what I saw? Everything. The way they were going to live their lives. How they were going to die." He closed his eyes and gently placed his hand onto the desk. "But that was then, now I've grown up." He swallowed heavily and beads of sweat popped out on his brow. "Living matter, something that was once alive, can pick up the resonance of people. Did you know that? And I can read that resonance, just as if I was touching the person." He stopped talking and felt for the echo present in the desk.

The air shivered around them, closed in on them, making the room seem suddenly so much smaller than it was. Conlon, whose arm was resting on the tabletop, felt a vibration, like the shiver of machinery, running through the wood, making a mockery of its apparent solidity. He looked down at his hand, and then up and saw that Adam had closed his eyes.

"A lumberjack. A carpenter. Salesmen." The words fell from Adam's lips like stones, too heavy for the air to hold them up. "The desk came to this station twenty years ago." They could hear his breathing now. Slow. Steady. Deep. It drew them in. Hypnotised. "Tom Brooks."

"What? How the hell …"

Conlon raised his hand to stop Steven Malcolm from completing his sentence. "Tom Brooks?"

"This was his desk. For twenty years. A good man."

"What is this is crap?"

"Steve …" Conlon warned, "… let him finish."

"What the fuck does he know about Tom?"

"Let him finish."

Adam opened his eyes. "Tom Brooks. Detective Constable Tom Brooks. Married. Two daughters. Died of stomach cancer six months ago." He fastened his gaze on Conlon. "This was his desk."

Conlon sat back and brought his hands together in a slow, mocking round of applause. "Very clever. Which one of my officers gave you that piece of information?"

"I remember when we were at school … you were always so very clever, Mark. What happened to that? To you?"

"I got wise, Adam." Conlon leaned forward so that their faces were only inches apart. "Wise to people like you."

" `People like me'?"

"Con men."Adam shook his head. There was a knock on the door. Green opened it and took a sheaf of papers from the constable outside. She glanced through them before handing them to Conlon. He scanned his eyes down the information. "The blood on your coat matches the boy's."

"Of course it does. But I wasn't at the club. Have you got any witnesses to say that I was there? Anything on CCTV? There are cameras all over this city; if I was at the club I must appear on one of them!" He stopped, took a deep breath and recovered his composure. "His blood is on my coat because he hit me. I've told you this, I don't know how many times. He hit me. Several times. I imagine his knuckles were quite badly scraped."

"Yes, they were." He looked down at the papers once more. Turned to the last page. "Who's Rupert Giles?"

"I'm sorry?"

"Rupert Giles. Who is he?"

"But … that's … that's on my computer …"

"Yes, it is. You gave us access to it."

Adam frowned. "Oh, yes. So I did." He'd forgotten. Last night seemed so long ago now.

" `Go and see Rupert Giles.' Top of today's `To Do' list. So who is he?"

"Someone I wanted to consult about this."

"This `creature.' "

"Yes."

"And what does he do that he's the person to consult?"

"I believe he has some expertise in these matters."

"Expertise?" Conlon's tone was blistering. "In `creatures of the night?' " Green and Malcolm laughed. "Let's cut the crap, Adam. Why don't you just admit it? You and the boy had a thing going. He dumped you and you killed him."

"And the women?"

"What women?" Conlon asked carefully. He held Adam's stare. Didn't so much as blink.

"The two women who died before Michael did."

"Why don't you tell us?"

"They died the same way, didn't they?" Adam stroked his hand over the warm wood of the table. "I felt it. It's exultation. Or what I took to be exultation. There will be more."

All three officers tensed. It was Conlon who spoke. "More?"

"Many more."

"What do you mean?"

Adam fell back in his chair and shook his head. "I'm telling you things and you're not listening, so what's the point? I think I've cooperated enough for the time being. May I have a cup of tea? Something to eat?"

"When I'm finished. I want to know …" Conlon stopped and reared back involuntarily as Adam gestured towards him with his bare hand. Adam's smile was knowing, bitter and sad. "I'm tired, Inspector. I don't think I have anything more to say to you at the moment." He dropped his hands into his lap, leaned his head back and closed his eyes once more.

Effectively shut out, the three detectives terminated the interview and left the room. In the incident room, Conlon gave his orders: food for Adam Barry; chase up Forensics for some idea of a murder weapon; updates on the CCTV tapes and the interviews; and information on Rupert Giles.

Something he could use to break Adam Barry.

Something he could use to stop the man from just getting up and walking out of their station.

He looked at his watch: 4.40am. <Doesn't time fly when ….> He couldn't bear to complete the thought.

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