note: i swear the next bits won't be so longggg ahhh. don't own BBC Sherlock or Les Mis
She's having lunch with Jehan in the usual café (old habits die hard, and besides, she can afford a few habits now anyway).
"Hey, if you're still looking for a new flat, Courf knows this guy, Combeferre, and long story short, he's got an empty flat in his building that he's renting out," Jehan informs her.
Eponine sets her coffee mug down on the table with a clink. "I don't have a job any more, remember? How am I going to afford the rent of some nice airy place?"
"No, no, it's okay, there's this guy that's been helping out the boys down in the Murder division, he's looking at the flat too. Maybe you guys could work something out?" He starts to ramble a little. "I know it's sorta weird rooming with a guy, but I mean, it sounds pretty big, and you two probably have way different schedules, and you're both the type that stays to themselves, so you shouldn't bother each other much…" Jehan tilts his head hopefully, kinda like a puppy. He's got even more freckles than the last time she saw him, forming new constellations across the bridge of his nose. "Come on now, you can't live in that dark shoebox forever. You deserve better."
She could never say no to him, especially since he's one of her last friends. Not when they were working together, and not now. "Oh, alright, if you insist. I'll take a look at it," she says, but Jehan is already beaming triumphantly.
"Courf's gonna take you, I think he's a block away,"
She gapes at him mock-dramatically. "Good Lord, Jean Prouvaire, you planned all along on me agreeing, didn't you?" Jehan laughs, all sweetness, and she pouts. "You're paying for lunch as penance."
He gracefully concedes, placing a few paper notes on the plastic tray the waitress gives him. "Oh, look, it's Courf," he says, standing up to wave at him down at the sidewalk.
Eponine watches in amusement. Maybe she's gone soft, but then again, Jehan always made a great undercover – after all, nobody looking at the lanky boy with the silly Kelly green cardigan and long ginger bangs that fall into his eyes had a police-issue pistol tucked in the waistband of skinny jeans under that floral print shirt. "I'd come with you, but I have to go back. Plus, I need a haircut." He pauses, before saying in a strained voice, "We miss you at work, you know, Ep."
"I'm not coming back, you know that," she says, her throat strangely tight as she ruffles his hair affectionately. "And don't get a haircut, you know Courf loves it like this. See you later." She giggles at how he ducks his head shyly at that.
"Ep, you look bloody gorgeous! As always." Courf calls out when she gets to the street, giving her a kiss on the cheek.
"Save it for someone else," she snaps good-naturedly, shoving one of his broad shoulders lightly.
"Believe me, I do, doll," he grins, winking up at the window where Jehan is smiling down at them. "Come on, you gotta meet this guy. I think you'll find him interesting… just don't get too freaked out when you talk to him."
They slide into his car, an unobtrusive white Toyota Corolla that has seen better days. "I don't get scared easily," she says flatly. "Except, of course, when you're driving."
"I know, I know, babe," Courf reassures, ignoring her quip, backing out of his parking spot with a haphazard twirl of the wheel, his arm lazily slung across the back of her seat. "Except this guy… he's kinda… weird. You'll see."
Please, how weird can he be in comparison to me? She wants to say, but Courf is driving way above the speed limit and she is too busy clinging to anything nearby for dear life.
Courfeyrac leads her down a corridor in the morgue (she gives a little wave to Joly, who's working in his office, probably typing up a report on some unfortunate John Doe). He opens a steel door and there's a tall man ordering an assistant to "let me know what bruises appear in an hour".
"Hey, here's the girl I was talking about. You know, about the flat?" Courf calls out. The man turns, giving her a quick glance. She gets the feeling she's being assessed silently.
"So, how'd you get burned?" he says nonchalantly, unbuttoning his cuffs and rolling up the white sleeves of his work shirt.
Eponine blinks once, twice. His eyes are locked on her face, serious blue. "Um… excuse me?"
"I think that's what they call it, right?" The man says, turning to a microscope. "When an undercover gets discovered?"
"Moved too fast, talked too much, who knows… drug dealers are paranoid, 'specially when they're high as a kite," she shrugs it off. The man looks up, his mouth twisting in a quick, mirthless smile.
"Liar. It's way more complicated than that, I can tell." He then turns to Courfeyrac. "She's interesting, this one." Courf laughs and makes a noncommittal agreement, and this guy turns back to Eponine. "How do you feel about violins?"
"I like them well enough," she replies cautiously, not quite comprehending.
"Good, because I play when I'm thinking. I also don't talk for days sometimes… leave me alone, and I'll be fine in a bit. What are my other shortcomings?"
Courf laughs. "Do you want the long list or the little one? He smokes, does chemical experiments –"
The man cuts in. "Smoking is a chemical experiment, technically."
"He says weird things like that –"
"Any objections?"
"Not at all," she laughs a little. "I may join you for a cigarette occasionally."
"You should know the worst of me before we decide to be roommates," he explains, still serious. "Anything you want to admit, Miss Thenardier?"
"Jondrette," she corrects automatically, before pausing. "How'd you know –"
"I'll explain later," he cuts her off, waving a hand.
"Um… I'm an insomniac, I get up at all sorts of hours –"
"So does he," Courfeyrac chimes in. "She's as bullheaded as you are, and she's feisty, too."
"That's not the worst of me," she protests. There is way too much to tell in one sitting without making this become some sort of weird confessional.
"Of course," the man gives her another one of his all-searching looks before nodding decisively. "Are you free tomorrow afternoon at 3?"
She nods.
"Good," he murmurs, pleased, moving towards the coat rack next to the door and pulling off a dark trench coat. "Now, if you'll excuse me, I've got a murder to solve –"
"- Wait, I don't know your name or the address," Eponine calls after him. "I don't know anything about you."
He pauses on his way out the door. "It's all right, I know about you. I'm Antoine Enjolras, and it's 221B Baker Street. Au revoir."
Once he's gone, she whirls on Courfeyrac. "What the fuck did you tell him?"
Courf takes a step back. "Whoa, calm down there, Ep. I didn't tell him anything."
She pursues him, relentless. "Then how'd he know all of that?"
He shrugs. "That's Enjolras for you. I bet he'll learn more about you than you about him, living in the same flat. He's not the bad sort, though. Good at heart."
Yes, she thinks, reflecting on solemn but curious blue eyes blazing in a pale face that had looked like he hadn't seen the sun in weeks. Not the bad sort, but then again, she isn't at all sure what "sort" he is. But she knows she trusts him – or perhaps she's in denial of how fascinated she is by him.
The next afternoon finds her standing in a flat in Baker Street.
The apartment is huge, at least, by Eponine's standards. Walls were coved in bookshelves – definitely a plus, and besides, the wallpaper was cute. Big windows, too; she is dazzled by the light streaming in for a moment. She is not light herself, but she has always been attracted to it – or maybe that's why. It's homey without verging on kitschy, open without feeling too vulnerable. Good, solid furniture already stands in place, and there is an island in the kitchen that she personally stands gloating over for a moment (not that she's an avid cook or anything, but it was the look of it that counted).
She's in love already, and she turns to Enjolras, hoping it isn't all a joke, because it is too good to be true. Her sentiments must show on her face, because he gives her another split-second smile before he turns around and yells out into the hallway and down the stairs, "Combeferre! We'll take it!"
Audric Combeferre turns out to be a quiet brunette in a prim burgundy sweater, clomping up the stairs with his arms full of the necessary documents. Peering through his horn-rimmed glasses up at her as he dumps his burden on the table, he says, somewhat sternly, "Just so you know, I'm not your guys' housekeeper. You can come down for a spot of tea and a chat if you'd like, but I am not responsible for cleaning or answering the door oranything." This is directed rather pointedly at Enjolras, who just sniffs. Eponine smiles. She flips through the papers, tapping her pen against her chin absentmindedly as she reads.
"You'll be taking the one bedroom, right?" Combeferre continues serenely, though both Eponine and Enjolras glance up from their respective papers in surprise. "Didn't you know you even liked girls, Enj."
"Both bedrooms. We're not a couple," Enjolras corrects brusquely. "And don't call me that."
Combeferre just shrugs, and Eponine keeps signing until her hand cramps.
"That should be everything," Combeferre finally informs them, pushing his glasses up his nose with an air that strikes her as being very grandfatherly, or at least, what she thinks grandfathers would be like. He shuffles the papers like a bird carefully arranging twigs for a nest, fastidious and almost reverent.
Eponine can't stop of herself from giving a wide grin. Even with the bedroom, the flat's dirt cheap – and now hers. Sort of. Her roommate is kind of weird, but, hey, at least she'd never be bored. "Thanks, 'Ferre," she beams before she can stop herself. "Is it okay if I call you that?"
He smiles benevolently. "Everyone does."
"I don't," Enjolras points out, putting his trench coat back on. He's always in a rush, Eponine notices, but that suits her just fine. "I've got to go check on something at the morgue, see you both tomorrow."
"Tomorrow then!" She calls after him as he dashes down the stairs. Combeferre, beside her, is just shaking his head, muttering about whirlwinds.
"How'd you meet him?" she asks in a wry chuckle.
"Enjolras helped me out a long time ago. A relative of mine was sentenced to death in Florida."
"He saved your relative from being killed?" Eponine turns back to him, startled.
The look in his eyes as he tranquilly takes a sip from his teacup is almost fondly reminiscent. "No, he ensured it."
"Oh my God, that's a real human skull," Eponine nearly drops her box of books.
"Oh, I took the liberty of moving in my stuff already, hope you don't mind," Enjolras murmurs from his comfortable seat on the armchair.
"That's a real fucking skull," Eponine repeats, as Jehan and Courf troop up the stairs with more of her stuff.
Enjolras looks up, his eyebrows furrowed in confusion. "Is… that not normal?" His limbs are haphazardly slung over the arms of the chair, catlike as he lounges.
"I should hope not," Eponine mumbles, dropping her box next to the bookshelves. They're already partially filled, and she scans the titles. "Identifying Tobacco Ash, by Antoine Enjolras," she reads aloud.
"It's a fascinating subject," Enjolras says, without a trace of sarcasm in his voice. Eponine opens her mouth to say something, but Jehan interrupts her.
"Hey, Ep? Where do you want this crap?"
"That one goes to my room, that one over here – shit, Courf, gently – I said gently!" Eponine slaps her palm to her face, closing her eyes briefly in frustration. She can feel Enjolras' wryly curious gaze on her.
"Don't just stare at me, come help!" She snaps in his direction. Rumbling with – she thinks it's suppressed laughter, but she can't really tell – Enjolras gets up, and to his credit, he does help carry what few boxes she has.
By evening, everything's been moved in and some of it has even been unpacked. Jehan and Courf have left for their own dinner, and 'Ferre brought up a dish of curry as a housewarming gift, and thus, Eponine is now lounging on their sofa, comfortably stuffed.
She's about to ask Enjolras something, but his cell goes off.
"Detective Inspector Pontmercy, what a surprise," Eponine's ears perk up. "…Indeed? I'll be right there." He's tucking the phone into his pocket as he's moving out the door, coat slung over his arm, when he pauses and turns back to her.
She's about to tell him to go ahead, but he stops her.
"Come with me."
"What?" Her eyebrows crinkle in confusion.
His hand is outstretched towards her. "You worked with the police before, and you were good, too, so you'd be helpful. Come with me." He says, more insistently this time.
She opens her mouth, intending to refuse him, but her feet are already moving across the floor and her hands are picking up her leather jacket where she threw it over a chair earlier, and suddenly she's already standing by his side. He gives her a smile, quirked and almost boyish, before his fingers latch around her wrist tightly, tugging her down the stairs and out the door. The London streets open up before her in the dusky evening, suddenly aglow with promise.
He calls a cab over with an arrogant beckon of his fingers. Once they're inside, she asks, "How'd you know I was an undercover, when we first met? And a Thenardier?"
His gaze turns from the world outside their cab and flickers over her. "When you walked in," he says after a small pause, "you immediately counted the number of people in the room and the number of exits. Having done that, you placed yourself in a position to watch all of them, moving so the door wasn't at your back, like it was when you entered. It's a very police thing to do, and since you did all of this in a matter of moments and clearly subconsciously, not a rookie then."
His talking starts to speed up, his low and musical voice filling up the inside of the cab as his eyes light up enthusiastically. "The inside of your jacket has a pocket - so does your friend Courfeyrac's, which I could see when you both held open the door to come in. His is worn and stretched from carrying a gun and badge, easily distinguishable. Yours, though, isn't. Your jacket isn't new, it's very comfortably worn in the shoulders and arms. What type of cop doesn't carry around their badge all the time? An undercover, of course – it would be detrimental to your investigation. There's a hundred other signs of being an undercover, but that was the one I noticed first. Not a cop any more, though, or else Courfeyrac would have introduced you as a colleague, not just as a friend. Why would an undercover, and a good one at that, judging from the way you moved instinctively after walking in, leave the force?"
He suddenly catches her left hand, turning it over. Gentle, sensitive fingers run over her palm. "There, see? I saw your scar when you waved to me. It's healed well, and it's very faint, but I'm a man of details. Classic defensive injury – the bullet grazed your palm when whoever it was shot you. A good undercover, getting shot in the line of duty – somehow you'd been betrayed or discovered. Either way, that's probably why you left. When you lied so smoothly about it, you basically confirmed it. Of course I wouldn't believe you when you said it was just a little lovebite from a drug dealer."
"That's… that's amazing," Eponine stutters, blinking rapidly. She's not an easy one to read, she knows, so it shocks her that he's so neatly pinned her under a microscope like she was just a moth. It's a little unsettling, to tell the truth. "And the bit about being a Thenardier?"
"That part's less impressive," he shrugs. Enjolras gently tilts her face towards him, his fingers on the line of her jaw. She tenses a little in surprise, but the look in his eyes is almost clinical. "See, you have your father's chin. I had the pleasure of meeting Monsieur Thenardier back in Paris, where I used to work."
"Not a pleasure at all, don't sugarcoat," she snorts. "And I'm still impressed. What you do is extraordinary."
"You think so?" His arrogant curl of his mouth is ill-suited to hesitancy, she can tell.
"Yes," she laughs a little. "I'm not lying."
His eyes narrow a little before they relax. "No, you're not. It's just that – most people would have slapped me by now."
"You? I wouldn't want to break such a pretty face," she teases lightly before she thinks. His eyes flash in surprise as he opens his mouth to reply, but then the cab stops.
"We're here," he announces flatly, hand dropping from her face.
The neighborhood is full of apartments waiting to be sold. One such building is crisscrossed with yellow crime scene tape, uniforms milling about.
"Enjolras, there you are," the big man at the door exclaims. "DI Pontmercy's upstairs, he's waiting for you."
In the glow of the cherry lights flashing on top of the police cars outside, Eponine suddenly recognises the man's profile: the domed forehead, the nose that had been broken and reset way too many times to count, the stubble-covered square jaw. "Hey, Bahorel."
"If it isn't little Eponine," Bahorel rumbles, pleased. "What are you doing here?"
She opens her mouth, but Enjolras is turning back, having already crossed the threshold. "She's with me," he says curtly.
Bahorel shrugs apologetically. "Sorry, I can't let anyone else in, even you, Ep?"
"I'm not coming in without her," Enjolras informs him resolutely, drawing up to his full height and arching an eyebrow, much to Eponine's chagrin.
A familiar voice calls from inside. "C'mon, Bahorel, just let them both in. It's not like Ep's a stranger to these things."
"Thanks, Feuilly," she smiles gratefully as she steps in behind Enjolras.
"No problem, piekna," the curly-haired man inclines his head. "It's on the third floor, make a left, okay?"
She's grateful Feuilly doesn't follow her up the stairs – this little impromptu reunion is making her head spin with memories (filching gum from Feuilly's pockets, learning about Bahorel's latest barfight, Courf's adventures trying to seduce the barista at the corner café), and the worst is yet to come.
The room is bare, which only acts to highlight the fact there is a woman on the floor, lying like a fallen bird. Her dark red hair is fanned out behind her, and one spiked heel is slipping off her foot. No matter how many bodies she sees, Eponine thinks, nothing will change how human they all look in death, something vulnerable and made of dust instead of the painted, invincible creatures everyone tried to look like.
Standing next to the body is a thin man in a thick beige jacket who looks up when they walk in, exquisitely freckled nose crinkling as he ruffles fluffy brown hair. "Hey, Enjolras, how you been – is that Eponine?"
"Marius," she says softly to the detective she used to be in love with.
"Detective Inspector Pontmercy now, thanks to Enjolras here," he beams, dimples showing, and she almost thinks he's going to take out his badge and show her.
Enjolras coughs, rolling his eyes at the two of them in a way that almost makes her open her mouth in protest. "If the pleasantries are over, I'd like to continue investigating… details, Pontmercy?" he's circling the corpse slowly, hands clasped behind his back.
"Well, it looks like a suicide but nobody would ever off themselves here, but I mean, it could be, but then again we've had three in the last two months and I'm so confused – find anything, Enjolras?" Marius suggests hopefully, hazel eyes lighting up like a child's. She never could figure out how in the midst of all that came with their profession, Marius Pontmercy still remained as innocent as a child. She'd never had a chance – she was already shadow when she joined the police force, and she was still a shadow when she left.
"Give me a moment. All I have so far is that she's a real estate agent, judging from her fingertips and the strain on her back. She also started cheating on her husband after her first child."
That's a lot already, Eponine thinks with a snort. "How so?" She tilts her head, coming to stand next to Enjolras.
"Her wedding ring is sliding off," he pointed. "You can tell there's no tanline underneath, so she must take it off often. Her manicure is impeccable, so she can't possibly have a job where she works strenuously with her hands. She must be cheating. And the timeline. Her ring's slipping off, so she must have lost a substantial amount of weight some time after she was married. She got it refitted when she got pregnant, though, and then never bothered again after she lost all that weight, which is why it's falling off now."
"That's astounding," she gapes.
"Not if it doesn't help solve the murder," Enjolras murmurs. He kneels rapidly, fingers skimming over the woman's face, lifting an eyelid to allow dark green eyes to stare sightlessly out for a moment.
"So it is murder," Marius gulps, jotting down something in the little black notebook he always carried around.
"Didn't I just say that?" Enjolras shot back, slightly irritated, standing back up. "Evening dress, heels - she's dressed for a date. Not with her lover either, she's got her wedding band on. With her husband then. Where's her bag? Mother like her, she'd carry a lot of things with her."
"Over here," Eponine calls, catching the flash of sequins in a shadowed corner of the room. "Hand me a pair of gloves, somebody."
The sparkling black satin matches the dead woman's dress, Eponine thinks absently, scrabbling at the clasp with latex-clad fingers. She withdraws an ID card.
"Elizabeth Black," she reads aloud. "She's 32. Real estate agent. Married to Henry Black." Enjolras sidles over to snatch the tiny rectangular clutch, pawing through its contents.
"Got her cell," he holds up the iPhone triumphantly. "Now, for the passcode."
"Birthday?" Eponine offers. "March 29, '81." She can feel Marius' astounded gaze on them both, but for some reason, she doesn't care.
"Nope," Enjolras shakes his head. "She set it so it was a word."
Eponine sidles over and snatches the clutch from under his arm neatly, searching.
"I tried 'password' already," Enjolras says, his eyebrows furrowed in concentration. He paces alongside the room. "But of course, she wouldn't use something like that – she's meticulous, look at how coordinated her outfit is, how polished her jewelry is. A word that means something." Marius opens his mouth, but Enjolras cuts him off with a groan as he tilts his head back. "Everyone, shut up, let me think. Don't move, don't breathe, just let me think."
There's a neatly folded piece of paper in the clutch, Eponine sees. "Michael's babysitter – 809-5635".
Enjolras turns at the rustle of paper. "I said, don't move –"
" - I've got it," Eponine cuts him off. She flashes the bit of paper at him. "Try 'Michael'."
His thumbs fly across the touch screen. For a moment, everything is still as everyone waits with baited breath.
Enjolras' little chuckle of triumph reverberates in her chest. "Of course. A mother always thinks of her children."
"Most mothers," Eponine mutters under her breath. Enjolras gives her a sidelong glance.
"Most mothers," he echoes in agreement, before continuing his perusal of Elizabeth Black's cell phone. "Ah, the wonders of technology. Look at how everyone trusts it. Our entire lives on these little shiny boxes of metal-and-plastic."
"You're welcome," Eponine raises an eyebrow pointedly. He looks up from the glowing screen.
"Thank you," he says, sounding both surprised and genuinely grateful. She smiles, and the corners of his mouth lift hesitantly back. He should smile more often, she decides; it softens the sharp, angular lines of his face and the sternness of his brow. I'll have to work on that.
Marius coughs. "I, uh, should notify her family. Interrogate her husband."
"And track down her lover," Enjolras adds, back to his arrogant self. "Now, if that's all, Detective Inspector, I think we'll be off now."
Eponine follows him out the door and down the stairs. "You're – you're not going to go with him?"
He turns to her, raising an eyebrow quizzically. "Why would I do that?"
"Don't you work for the police?"
He guffaws out into the night air as they walk by a curious Feuilly and Bahorel and duck under the yellow crime scene tape. "Me? Work for the police?" His nose crinkles in well-bred disgust at the idea. "My God, no. I'm a consultant. The world's only consulting detective."
She gives him an unimpressed look out of the corner of her eyes, trudging beside him. "There's such a thing?"
He stops on the edge of the curb, hands tucked into trench coat pockets. "I invented the job," Enjolras informs her so proudly that she has to laugh. Her laughter sends billows of white into the night air as he looks at her quizzically, completely serious.
"Of course you did," she shakes her head, opening the door of the cab that pulls up to the curb alongside them. "Come on now, it's cold outside and I was just about to make tea before we left."
The next morning, she wakes up to a completely still apartment.
Oh, I could get used to this, she thinks contentedly, padding out of her room, barefoot in a big t-shirt and shorts, humming to herself as she opens the fridge in a kitchen aglow with the white light of morning. She's considering doing a pastry run when Enjolras shuffles out of his room sleepily, his golden curls in glorious disarray and one cheekbone creased from a pillow.
"So you don't look perfect all the time," she giggles, obscenely pleased, and he just glowers. The effect is dulled by an expansive yawn, resulting in more giggles. "Do you cook at all?"
"Only in theory," he sniffs haughtily. She only laughs all the harder and sets him to make the coffee while she decides to cook a few eggs – the carton from 'Ferre is one of the few breakfast items in there. She makes a mental note to go grocery shopping as she turns on the morning news, while Enjolras works some magic with his shiny enamel-and-chrome coffee machine and plants himself at the kitchen table.
There's a prim blonde woman in a bright pink suit and matching lipstick reporting today, and she shuffles her papers with the appropriate amount of decorum as she informs the entirety of Britain that "…the police have arrested one Harry Black, suspect in the murder of a young woman found at a construction site in Greater London…"
"Enjolras, how do you like your eggs?" She asks, cracking them against the curved edge of the counter and listening to the egg whites sizzle. "Enjolras?"
His eyes are glued to the screen. "Damn it, Pontmercy," he hisses.
"Enjolras?" She asks again, more hesitantly this time.
"The husband didn't kill her, they're asking all the wrong questions," he snaps, throwing his hands in the air. "Can't they see that? Nobody sees anything these days." He gets up, suddenly violently awake and fuming.
"Enjolras, can this wait until afterbreakfast?" She demands of him, hands on hips.
"And leave an innocent man in jail any longer?" He asks, his lip curling. "Preposterous."
"Fine, then can I at least put some trousers on before we go?" She demands of him, hands on hips.
He gives her a blank stare before he blushes. "Oh. I suppose that would be wise, due to societal conventions."
Eponine bolts for her room and tosses on jeans and a big black sweater, swiping on her trademark scarlet lipstick like it's war paint. In the other room she can hear Enjolras pacing and muttering things to himself.
"You never really stop moving, do you?" She pants, hopping on one foot to tie the laces of her Doc Martens as he trots down the stairs, looping a blood-red scarf around his neck.
"Not when there's innocent people being held for murder," he growls. "The justice system is supposed to do just that – justice."
"Welcome to the flaws of bureaucracy," she snarks, making the last knot and flipping the hair out of her eyes. "Is that why you don't work for the police?"
Enjolras gives her a sidelong glance. "The police have no imagination," he growls, and she takes that for an affirmative.
"I was a member of the police once," she points out as he fairly leaps into the cab like a dog who thinks he's going to the park.
"You're different," he insists vehemently, and she figures that's as close to a compliment as anyone could ever get from him.
It turns out that Elizabeth Black had been poisoned using tetrodotoxin.
"Found from only two sources: the blue-ringed octopus and the puffer fish," Joly says, clad in a white lab coat at the forefront of the conference room. "It leads to complete paralysis and dysfunction of the central nervous system before death. In some cases, victims are completely lucid up until their last breath."
Marius looks like he's going to pull out his own hair. Eponine watches in quiet sympathy. It's been a year since she left the force, and nothing has changed, not even the people. She used to adore those freckled dimples and long lashes, the flash of his brown-green eyes, like the murky waters of the Atlantic. Now, she's not quite sure.
"You have the wrong man," Enjolras repeats in the definitive, "it-is-law" tone that Eponine is rapidly thinking of as exclusively his. He'd have made a fearsome judge, she thinks mirthfully.
"But, but, but, Enjolras," Marius sputters in protest. "Tell me what's wrong here, because it's looking like a pretty solid case. Henry Black works at an aquarium, he specialises in animal husbandry. He'd have access to whatever fish he wanted. He finds out his wife's been sleeping around and then he kills her, open-and-shut."
"They have this conversation every couple cases," Bahorel leans over to whisper to her in a deep bass, grinning crookedly. She can't muster up an inkling of surprise.
Enjolras paces the room. "Tetrodotoxin's awfully hard to harvest – a blue-ringed octopus contains enough in one bite to kill 26 adults. Just one bite. Why would Black take so much trouble when he can just as easily rustle up something at home, like antifreeze from his car? And then the location – why not at dinner, pretend it's a little sushi dish gone wrong? Why that apartment?" He turns his attention on Marius again. "You said there were already two?"
"Yes," Joly murmurs.
Enjolras groans, pinching the bridge of his nose. "Damn it, Pontmercy. I told you you were promising, I know, but why on earth haven't you gotten me sooner?" Marius flounders for an answer, but Enjolras isn't listening any more, up and pacing once again. "It's fine, though – serial killers, always give you something to look forward to, and eventually they willmess up."
"So, um, Pontmercy, shall we let the husband go?" Courfeyrac asks in a long-suffering voice after a few moments.
"No, no, I need to talk to him," Enjolras interrupts, waving a hand. "And get me the files for the other victims, I'll take them back to the apartment and look them over."
Eponine watches through the glass as Enjolras interrogates Henry Black, who perfectly fits the role of stereotypical grieving and confused husband, looking owlish in a cream cable-knit jumper and round glasses. He was on the shorter, more heavyset side, and not all that glamorous at all – nothing like the elegant, fine-boned creature that was his wife.
"There you are, beautiful," Courfeyrac exclaims, walking in with his arms full of manila folders. "Here are the files on the previous victims, give 'em to your flatmate once he's done, won't you, babe?" She smiles and nods.
When Enjolras whisks out of the interrogation room, all sweeping trench coat and the tail of his scarf trailing behind him like the Impressionistic scarlet brushstroke of an artist, he fairly growls. "That man was completely unhelpful. He had no idea his wife was straying until she was dead."
Eponine shrugs, leaning against a dingy wall. "Not everyone is like you."
He gives her an exasperated look that says I knew that (she does not stop to think that she is beginning to read him, too – or perhaps she does not want to).
But anyway, she hands over the thick files and tells him that if he's done here, she may as well go down to Tesco to fill up their pathetically empty refrigerator. It's only a few blocks from the precinct, so she figures she may as well walk. He doesn't object at all, already flipping through the files.
She pops her earbuds in and clips down the pavement, enjoying the bustle and chaos that was distinctively London, wind rippling through her hair, when her phone rings.
"Hello?"
"Stop walking."
"Excuse me?" Despite herself, she halts out of sheer surprise.
"Thatta girl," the voice croons in a perfect BBC accent. "Now look around. You're in a blind spot. No cameras turned your way. That's right, look around and check."
"Coast clear, sir. You gonna tell me my mission now?" Eponine quips. She's been summoned mysteriously too many times to be afraid now – just slightly irritated. People are streaming all around her, chatting and briskly walking along, snug in their daily lives, and she's stuck talking to some guy straight out of a James Bond flick. "I'm feeling a little cheated here – Daniel Craig in a three-piece suit is nowhere in sight."
The voice continues on, mostly unruffled, but to Eponine's deep satisfaction, she can detect a hint of annoyance. "A black car is going to pull up beside you. Get in."
She can see the car approaching even as he speaks. Cars were never really her strong point (that was more Azelma's thing, she was always good at hotwiring and picking the locks), but she can tell from the sleek lines and the gloss of the tinted windows that it's not one of her father's beat up, straight-from-the-chop-shop vehicles. It's enough to send a little alarm bell ringing in her mind.
"What if," Eponine starts tensing the muscles in her thighs, bending her knees slightly. "I didn't?"
"Miss Jondrette, I wouldn't advise that," the man on the phone starts to say, but she has already snapped the phone shut. Before she can take a few steps, though, strong arms wrap around her waist. She starts to kick and claw, but there's a prick at her neck and suddenly everything is cottony darkness.