Remember: Pont au Change
Thanks to L'Ael-Inire for her review!
A half-awake policeman glared across the fiacre at the former inspector, whose complexion resembled that of a dusty apple from the humiliation. The gendarmes weren't long in their task. They had had his hands tied behind his back with course rope and a fiacre called before he could so much as say his name. Granted, this was somewhat understandable considering the inspector's appearance at the time. A six-foot Roma of his strength (and in the particularly disheveled state the inspector doubtlessly was in) would not have made a good impression on anyone, much less the police. Add to this the cold, threatening air which had served the man so well during his time on the force, and it becomes no mystery why the gendarmes reacted as they did—brutally and efficiently.
Nonetheless, such treatment was intolerable to the eyes of Javert. He was a citizen and moreover an officer of the law. To be treated as a common criminal was beyond demeaning, especially when he had done nothing wrong. To his rather extensive knowledge of penal code, he had been entirely within his rights to be sleeping by the road. The action was a little foolish perhaps, given the frequency of highway robberies, but within his rights. Furthermore, having been bound by Enjorlas and his crew only two days ago, this fresh confinement brought back severely unpleasant memories of the former. Thus, it was with barely concealed loathing and disgust that Javert stared across the fiacre at the officer.
The officer himself, having just been pulled out of bed to deal with a large, ragged-looking gypsy, stared back with a gaze reflecting similar sentiments to that of his captive.
Finally, he cleared his throat noisily and pulled a notebook out of the inner pocket of his jacket. "Parents?" he asked in a tone that suggested the man across from him had been created by some means other than human conception.
"My mother was Jaelle Mihai. I do not know my father," he answered with perfect civility. Inwardly, he was bristling over this man's impertinent questioning of his heritage, but to show such hostility was out of the question. Rather, he gave a slight smile, letting the man scribble away in his notebook as he asked more questions of the inspector's place of birth, current home, and income- questions Javert himself had asked so many times of the sniveling miscreants he had arrested.
When they finally arrived at occupation, Javert paused a bit before answering. To say he was an inspector, or rather a recently deceased inspector, would not be prudent. If they did happen to believe him, further questioning would ensue over why a man of his position and stage in life was choosing to frighten small children in the middle of the night. More likely though, they would assume he was being pert or (and given his disheveled appearance this was perhaps the most likely) they would assume that he was insane.
The penal institutions for the mentally ill, if a little nicer than the regular prisons, were still despicable places- especially when one has been sent there by mistake.
Keeping these facts in mind, he quickly tried to come up with something close enough to the truth and far enough from "inspector" to keep him out of harm's way. "I was…a guard."
"Oh?" the man asked with a slight raise of his eyebrow. "Over what?"
"A prison," he replied, mentally cursing the man's stupidity. "I was a guard at Toulon."
The man grimaced. Clearly he had heard of Toulon. "And what is a man like you doing here?"
Unwilling to extend his story further, Javert simply stared at him, his grey eyes boring holes into the other gentleman's forehead. Apparently, from this the man derived his answer, for the next thing he did was scribble a few words in his notebook then place the papers in his jacket pocket. "Well, monsieur, we're almost to the station," the officer sneered. "Anything else you would like to say?"
"Other than that you are a disgrace to your profession?" Javert thought to himself. Rather than voicing these thoughts aloud though, he simply shook his head.
"Very well." The man said as the door of the fiacre opened. Glancing over the bulk of the man across from him, he added, "I suppose you know you're to come willingly."
"Am I?" he thought, once again inwardly chastising the man. A real criminal would have broken past him and been halfway to Reims by now. However, Javert was no criminal.
With strained civility, he responded in the affirmative. At this, the officer gave a barely concealed sigh of relief and motioned for the man to follow him. This Javert did, somewhat awkwardly due to his bound hands, though not as awkwardly as before at the barricades as he was no longer martin-galed, and trailed behind the rather portly officer, who was going at an enfuriatingly slow pace. Once they reached the door (which no doubt seemed to take an eternity to our bound inspector), the officer pulled out a set of keys and, not bothering to keep an eye on his prisoner, spent a full minute trying to get the lock to open. Marveling at the man's lack of common sense, he hoped that this imbecile was only a substitute for a more competent officer.
He wasn't.
Or at least he was the officer that was designated to care for the villain known to them only as "the gypsy". The man our inspector had spent the ride with, whose name we will later learn was Monsieur Lebête, was apparently the assistant head of police and was rather proud of this singular achievement. This became overtly clear when the portly man deigned to remove his coat, revealing several brass medals he had won (in a contest he had created) for his "outstanding service to the public good". No doubt this came close to physically sickening our champion of the law. Nonetheless, he maintained a cool and detached demeanor with his fury of soul only reflected in his firmly clenched jaw and a hard glint in his eyes. This can be seen as a credit to the immense store of will-power Monsieur l' Inspector possessed.
After a few moments of looking over papers and talking to the two other officers the station currently possessed, it was decided that the gypsy would be placed in a holding cell until the assistant head of police could gather enough information to confirm whether he was a murdering con or an innocent civilian.
Now this may seem like a reasonable action to the outside observer. The law must be sure of itself before taking action after all. However, considering the fact that no one Javert knew lived in Senlis and that those who had known him in Paris believed him to be a lifeless corpse, such a situation became astoundingly difficult. It was therefore with a certain amount of consternation that Javert found himself escorted to the row of jail cells at the back of the station and put under guard.
As he sat in his cell, he reflected on how long such investigations normally took. He had known cases such as these to last for months. However, this was in the extremity. It was more common for the person in question to be presumed guilty after a week of fruitless investigation and be taken to the court of Assizes.
Naturally, neither of these options were particularly favorable to our inspector. Such a case was not worthy of Javert or, for that matter, the court of Assizes. Moreover the hassle of having to prove he was both a citizen and a law-abiding one was not the most pleasing of ideas. There was the possibility (which even Javert had to recognize despite his immense faith in the law) that his case could be mistried. No, it was better to spare both the court and himself the trouble by finding some way to prevent them from taking such a step.
After a few moments, he found that he could think of only one favorable course of action, and that in of itself was not particularly satisfying. He could work for the station. The place was clearly under-brained, if not understaffed, and he was more than qualified for the job. After a few months, he would have worked off his bail and been on his way. Still, the idea of returning so quickly to the task of law enforcement after his recent catastrophe was not a pleasant one. Then again, he thought to himself as he sipped at the cup of water that had been left for him, given his prisoner status he would not be given decisions like those he had had to face with Jean Valjean. Indeed, the most strenuous task he could remember coming across as a young officer was not mental or moral, but the physical tasks of restraining and running after hooligans—tasks which would remove his attention from the swirling thoughts of the last few nights.
Thus, resigning himself to his course of action, he sipped a little bit at the cup of water provided him and waited for his inept overseer to return.
This did not take long. Apparently, it had just occurred to Monsieur Lebête that he had forgotten to inform himself of his prisoner's name- despite its being the first thing one usually asks. Thus, the portly man appeared before the inspector's cell with pen and notebook in hand.
Javert had noticed the lack when they were in the fiacre. However, not being in the mood to assist his companion, he had not pointed out the mistake. So now, at the sight of the somewhat perplexed assistant head, a small smirk made its way across Javert's lips. "Name- Sunara Javert."*
The civil servant blanched a little at having his thoughts so easily read. No doubt he attributed it to gypsy magic rather than the astute mind of a police inspector first class.
He quickly wrote down the information and slipped the notebook under his right arm. His mouth half-open, he gazed suspiciously at his captive before muttering, "Yes, well… that is all."
With that he turned around and began to make his way, rather hurriedly, from the room. Javert simply frowned at his retreating back and cleared his throat.
"One moment... monsieur."
Lebête turned around, eyeing his prisoner with suspicion. After all, this strange man, who showed no sign of fear at being put in a jail cell, had just read his thoughts. "What?"
Our inspector clenched his jaw, wishing he did not have to go through with his entreaty. "Might I perhaps render some assistance to the force while you are going through the necessary formalities?" He gestured with his head to the notebook under the man's arm. "You can see I have worked with the law before, if on the slightly more unsavory end. I believe you could find me most useful."
Now Lebête was the one clenching his jaw. Clearly, such an option was not the most congenial to him. Perhaps by now he had realized the possibility of such a man being able to break through any resistance they brought against him.
Javert let a little sigh escape through his nose. "If you wish, I can remain bound."
This seemed to hearten the man considerably. After a few more moments of thought, he shook his head, muttering to himself "Well, it can't hurt to try it—and if he remains bound…" He turned his attention back to his prisoner. "I assume you wish to be paid for your trouble?"
"Food and board will do," he answered, deciding not to bring up the idea of bail until later. At a slight frown from Lebête he added, "It is no more than you would otherwise give a prisoner. Total starvation, last I looked, was not part of the jailing process."
But this was not what the Lebête found so perplexing. He was wondering what could possibly motivate a criminal to work for the police-furthermore without pay! At the same time, he realized such an offer would be foolish to pass up.
"Very well, then," he said. He took the notebook from under his arm and flipped it open. "Given your history, I suppose you could start out on file-duty. There's a pile of menial reports on my desk. You are to sort them and place them in the bottom drawer of my desk." He glanced up at Javert. "Is that clear?"
"Perfectly."
"Untie his hands..."
*One may have noticed that this name is profoundly Roma. We ourselves were surprised by this turn of events, until we realized that such is the mind set of a gypsy woman giving birth in jail. This, in our minds, also explains the lack of any mention of Javert's Christian name in all but two of the documents recording his existence.