Gypsies Kiss

Chapter Two

So the saying went fortune favours the bold, and it takes someone bold to call on someone like Paul Billsby for a favour. Over the years I'd been in this job I'd come across all sorts, hard men callous men brutes that would gouge your eye out then piss in the socket just for looking at them the wrong way. It was par for the course of being a PI, in order to get some jobs done you had to get down in the mud and wallow with the sort of people ordinarily no sane person would want to get within a mile of. Paul Billsby was one such man.

If you wanted a woman in Dorset you went to Billsby, same goes if you wanted a man. Drugs, porn illicit duty free booze and so I'd heard guns. Billsby either had it or could lay his hands on it, he was like Bilko if Bilko had gone darkside. As well as all this he was also an information trafficker. If the Turner boy was missing for any other reason than genuinely being lost – it was not uncommon for kidnappings to happen when some gypsy blood feud or another went too far – then there was a good chance that Billsby had had a sniff of it.

He lived over in Wallisdown, a village that was as much a part of Bournemouth as it was Poole. It was an unassuming modest sized mansion in a residential street with its own drive and ten foot hedge blocking view from the road and any prying undercover cops. It was a very clever choice of residence because it didn't stand out because all the other houses were of the same calibre, sure none of them were in the Sandbanks league mind you but it was a respectable enough area and it gave Billsby the facade of respectability. He was a member of the local residence association, I'd heard tell he even allowed the Neighbourhood Watch to use the small annex on the grounds for their meetings. To the casual passer-by there was nothing overly spectacular about the house, alongside its neighbours it fitted in.

But then Billsby had to go and blow it with the brace of 4x4 and pink Porche parked out front. I'd always pegged him for a flash git, he couldn't help it but to flaunt his wealth just like any other pimp no matter what age they lived in or where they lived.

I'd had the sense to call ahead and as I left my mid-range slightly run down car parked in the road a couple of goons nodded me up the short drive. I noticed there were other men by the front door and in the ground floor windows. I'd been here a couple of times before but never had Billsby had this much muscle on show, I began to worry perhaps now was not the best time to call in a favour. Although I did not know it at the time Billsby had bigger things to worry about than anything I might be after.

Whereas the exterior fitted in with the surrounding houses the inside was all bling, mock marble columns marched along the hall and halfway up the sort of sweeping staircase you'd expect to see Scarlett O'Hara come floating down. From memory the house had about ten or so rooms and the entrance was a statement that it was more than it seemed.

Strangely Billsby was waiting in the hall. Dressed like Hugh Hefner he oozed a sliminess that some people were attracted to. He always had women on his arm but then seeing what he was and they did they were probably paid to be there, or more likely under orders and threats of punishment.

He was slightly shorter than me, but then considering I topped out just over six foot and change a lot of people were. Despite his dress sense all comparisons to the Heff ended when you looked at his head, like a miss shaped turnip it sat on his body with no visible neck, the hair was receding fast like it was in a hurry to escape being part of his body. He held out a pudgy hand that had a ring on each finger, his face creased into a smile that made his eyes near disappear in the folds of his cheeks. I bet when he was at school and met with his careers officer if he'd have said any profession other than pimp they'd have steered him away from it. He was born to the part.

"Toby, Toby...it's been too long."

I nodded as I took his hand, not sure where he was coming from with the greeting, we'd been little more than passing acquaintances over the years, in fact I'd say the amount of times we'd actually met could be counted on one hand. We could never say we had met any of those times as friends.