Weapon of Choice
Chapter 11: Turnaround
Thanks so much for the reviews!
This chapter is quite long but there's no much Smithy/Kerry as I'm trying to push the plot along a bit more. There'll be plenty of Smithy/Kerry moments coming up in the next few chapters, though! Hope you enjoy this chapter and please review. :) xxx
Kerry and Smithy didn't see each other again until the bell rang at the end of the school day. Dale had been teaching during Kerry's free period, and Joe had asked her to help him tutor an extra English lesson for GCSE students at lunchtime. Kerry was eager to see Smithy; to find out how his session with Jasmine had gone. She planned to cook his favourite curry for dinner as a 'thank you' for all he had done and was continuing to do for her and for the case. They chatted a little on the walk home but didn't want to mention anything about the case until they were safely inside, away from prying eyes and ears.
Smithy made coffee, unknowing to Kerry, using it as a distraction to buy himself some more time. He mentally kicked himself repeatedly for ever suggesting getting close to Jasmine, and now for not feeling like he could go through with it. He knew that Kerry would be disappointed with him at the very least.
Finally, with a mug of coffee each, Kerry asked what Dale had been dreading.
"So, how did you lesson with Jasmine go?"
He couldn't decide whether to tell the flat out truth or to embellish. He supposed he could tell her Ms Phillips had insisted on joining the lesson but he dismissed it, Kerry could always check with Erin and find out he had lied to her. Lying wasn't Smithy's style either, and he knew that he owed Kerry the truth.
"It didn't. Another teacher helped out with the training session so I got very little time with her."
Kerry absorbed this, feeling deflated and a little bit annoyed. "There's always tomorrow." She replied, aiming for some levity in her tone. Smithy's face betrayed him before he could speak, though. "You don't want to do it, do you?"
He hesitated, but honesty won out again. "No, not really. It was a stupid idea, I never should have suggested it."
Kerry sighed. She wanted to tell him that it wasn't, but part of her agreed with him. Getting close to Jasmine could be dangerous for him because of her father and his nefarious connections, but trying to get under the skin of a minor could put his entire future career in jeopardy. If Jasmine really was guilty of murdering Kathryn Walker then they didn't want to risk her being awarded a reduced sentence because her lawyers believed that Smithy's involvement with her had been inappropriate. It was plausible that one man in a position of authority had become more than professionally involved with Jasmine, but two? All of this was reasonable, Kerry accepted that but it didn't mean she had to like it.
"Why did you suggest it then?" Her cup of coffee forgotten, Kerry rounded on him with her hands on her hips. "If you knew you didn't have the balls to see it through?" She knew it was unfair, but she was suddenly too angry to care.
"I'm sorry, Kerry. I know how much this case means to you, I wanted to help things along."
Kerry ran her hands through her hair in exasperation. "I just wish you hadn't said anything at all. I believed that you were going to get somewhere with this, you even told DCI Meadows about it! I've shown my hand to Joe now, too."
"I'm sorry." He said again, going over to where she stood. "If you really want me to, I can try again."
Kerry shook her head, her anger slipping away from her now. "No, you're right. We'll have to find another way."
She leaned into him, resting her forehead against his shoulder and closing her eyes. A little amazed at how they had gone from a shouting match to an almost intimate gesture, he slipped his arms around her and she didn't pull away.
Jasmine Black walked home from school alone. She had managed to dodge her so called friends and had taken the less well known paths home. She needed time to think and there was no way she would be able to do that with the distractions of others disrupting her concentration. Although he had only turned seventeen recently, Jasmine Black was wise for her years. Growing up the way she had, without a mother and with a father who had been preoccupied with business more often than not, she had had every little choice. It had paid off though, because now her father trusted her implicitly. In fact, he had more faith in her that a lot of the men who had worked for him for years. Jasmine was organised; prepared and she was rarely outsmarted by anyone or anything. Today, however, she had been truly tested.
After her English lesson with Joe that morning she hadn't expected to see him again that day, at least not during school hours anyway. When he caught up with her in the corridor and asked for a word with her about her coursework, she knew something was wrong. It was rare that he was the one who sought her out and not the other way around. She had initiated their entire affair and he had been powerless to stop her once she had become determined to sink her teeth into every inch of his life.
When Jasmine's father had found out that she was having a sexual relationship with her teacher, a man a dozen years her senior, he had hit the roof. His anger had not been directed at Jasmine though, he knew he had neglected her and that growing up without a maternal figure had impacted negatively on her. She had been sixteen at the time and not breaking the law by having sex, apart from the fact that her chosen partner was her English teacher.
"Why not one of the boys your own age?" Grant had asked her, to which Jasmine had simply laughed and rolled her eyes at him.
Grant asked her if she was going to break it off with her teacher, knowing it would be both foolish and pointless to tell her to stop seeing him. Jasmine had inherited her stubborn streak from both of her parents and telling her not to do something would only making the option seem more attractive.
"I want to meet him." Grant had told her when she confirmed his suspicious that she would not stop seeing Joe until she was good and ready.
"You already have." She replied, referring to one of the few parents' evenings he had attended at her school. "My English teacher, Joe Harrison."
Grant had frowned, trying to summon an impression and a mental image of the man his daughter was sleeping with. "I want you to invite him to dinner." He said, when he was unable to drag the information he required from his memory. Grant had an almost photographic memory for some details and faces, but someone he considered unimportant, such as one of his daughter's teachers, could easily slip through the cracks. If he had known that his daughter would go on to have a sexual relationship with the man, Grant would have paid much closer attention.
"Daddy, are you sure?" Jasmine had asked, and her father had insisted. From then on, Joe Harrison had been indebted to the Black family with no way to break his ties to them. Well, not if he valued his life, anyway.
Jasmine's relationship with Joe had changed from the point forward, but she still held his puppet strings, perhaps tighter than before. Her father's interest in Joe and their relationship, had led her own interest in him to waver a little. He was still a much better candidate than any of the boys in her class or the year above, though. Although she liked Joe well enough as a person, their relationship was mainly physical and she was the one who would call the shots. Therefore, when he had asked to speak with her a frown had formed between her neatly manicured eyebrows and had remained there ever since.
"What do you mean?" She had asked him in a violent whisper. "Did you tell someone about us?"
Joe shook his head, feeling a small lurch of fear in his heart. It wasn't really Jasmine he was afraid of, it was the influence she had over her father and Grant's line of work that terrified him. "It was the new English teaching assistant, Ms Jones. I don't know how she found out, but she knows about us."
"What does she know?"
"That we've been having sex."
Jasmine swore. "If my dad finds out, he's going to be seriously pissed off." She said it as though the thought had never occurred to Joe, who had been thinking about it all day.
At the end of the day, Joe was expendable, but Jasmine wasn't through having her fun with him yet. Maybe when someone better came along, perhaps that sexy new football coach? She reminded herself that Dale was married, and that he had been making quite an obvious attempt to avoid being alone with her after their first lesson together. Not to mention that the woman Dale was married to was the one who had found out about her and Joe's affair.
"Did you try to deny it?" She asked.
Joe shook his head. "She overheard out conversation yesterday morning, and there was nothing I could say to explain it away."
"We'll just have to make sure she doesn't tell anyone else." She said, turning away to go to her next class and leaving him with his mouth open. He was left to wonder if this was yet another thing to worry about and keep him awake at night.
