SPOILED 2 - part thirteen (Finale)

‘In disarray’ might have been too soft a term to describe the state Sweet, Dey and Lucas found The Palace in. Arthur’s mind, in fact, favoured the descriptor ‘Total Clusterfuck’.

The place was coming to pieces around them, walls shaking loose of gilt and marble panelling, cracking in real time right there before their eyes. A humongous gilded pillar had come down, the ceiling it had once propped now bowing dangerously in on itself.

And from The Palace, out to the lawns beyond (which themselves were erupting into bursts of lava spouts) fled the staff. Guards whose loyalty had clearly expired making a run for it, waitstaff, cleaners, cooks, mechanics, each dispossessed of their roles, now bent only on self-preservation.

‘They’re all heading to the harbour!’ Manni lamented in desperation. ‘They’ve all got the same idea as us. There aren’t gonna be any of Swan’s yachts left by the time we get the detainees out!’

Arthur shook his head, watching the cowards all abandoning this hellhole; burly guards were shoving rotund butlers aside to better snatch their own safe passage. ‘Let me think, let me think… Alright, Manni, you stay with Lucas - see if you can secure a boat and keep any of them drowning rats out. Fend ‘em off if you have to. I’ll go and round up the feedees from - Lucas, did you say they was mostly in dormitories?’

‘Sweetheart, this place is falling apart!’ Manni cried.

‘No, wait!’ Lucas chipped in. ‘I’ll go. I need to find my friend Reece, and besides, I have the master key, right? The Doc entrusted it to me.’ He held up his left hand for a wiggle, displaying the insignia ring Dr Nightingale had gifted him in his final moments - it only fitted around Lucas’s pinky.

‘That’s too dangerous, lad.’ Arthur laid a hand on the boy’s padded shoulder. ‘Leave it to me.‘

‘No,’ Lucas insisted. ‘I know this place better than you guys.’

He stopped to let a great chunk of ceiling crash down behind him, destroying what was probably a priceless vase. ‘I’ll be quicker at finding everyone and rounding them all up. You said the harbour’s down that way? Where they’re all running to? You two go grab a ship and I’ll come find you there, me and all the dorm boys. Just don’t leave without us.’

Arthur bit his lip beneath his moustache. ‘I don’t like that. It’s not safe back in there.’

‘No, Arthur, he’s right,’ Manni told him. ‘He’ll find them quicker than we ever could. He knows his way around. We have to hurry before Swan’s cronies nab every last chance we’ve got of getting off this rock!’

Sweet grunted unhappily. ‘Alright,’ he addressed Lucas again. ‘But you be careful. And be quick! This whole bloomin’ place ain’t gonna last much longer.’

Lucas nodded, wobbling his double chin, and didn’t hang around. He turned and made back for the tram, breaking into a sort of waddling-jog.

‘God, I hope we made the right call there…,’ Arthur grumbled.

‘No time for that now, come on,’ Manni grabbed his hand. ‘We have to find a yacht and then try and secure it for all the dorm guys.’

They set off across lawns now liberally sprinkled with little puddles of hissing lava - one appeared to have ensnared a peacock - and bore down toward the harbour. No fleeing staffers paid them any heed, all too invested in saving their own skins, no doubt. Either way, Sweet and Dey kept a certain distance from them.

Swan’s gardens were grotesquely oversized (they’d seemed like a blur when whipping through via canal), and Arthur was soon huffing and puffing, but he wouldn’t be hindered. He’d made that mistake once before on their last case. Never again.

‘Are you okay?’ Manni asked him, concerned.

Sweet nodded and ran on. ‘Fine,’ he lied with a hammering heart.

‘I think that’s the harbour up ahead,’ Dey went on. ‘Fuck, they’re already leaving!’

And Arthur saw it too. Numerous though Swan’s fleet of seafaring vessels may have been, the first couple of yachts had already begun to pull away, heading out to the ocean.

‘Fuck! We gotta-‘

A fist connected with Sweet’s jaw, knocking him sideways, almost to the ground. He shook off the pain, blinking stars, and could have sworn there was a tiger pacing nearby!

‘Ohhhh, you’re not going anywhere…,’ said a laboured, uneven voice.

It belonged to a Mr Swan. But not the one Arthur and Manni had encountered earlier.

This Swan sported a gut that looked positively packed solid, engorged to such a degree it’d burst open the lower portion of his designer shirt which now hung in torn pieces about his sweaty body. His chest was working out huge breaths, and his hair and beard had turned wayward. In his eyes gleamed a kind of raw, unvarnished rage.

Manni, without needing further provocation, went to lunge at the man, but Swan held up a finger and the tiger - huge and white - padded between he and Dey, growling.

Arthur spotted something, however. Putting aside the fact there was a fucking great big tiger here in the first place, he noticed an empty hypodermic needle jutting out of the beast’s back.

Sweet couldn’t help wondering if Dr Nightingale had stuck it there before being scratched to smithereens, maybe in an attempt to subdue the big cat; that might have explained its slightly laconic movements.

‘It’s over, Swan!’ Arthur growled to the tiger’s crazed, plumped-out owner. ‘Your island is finished! All your goons are jumping ship!’

Swan loped forward, not looking totally at ease in manoeuvring such a large body, but nonetheless grabbing Sweet by the collar, rasping, ‘My reign will NEVER be over!’

Dey continued to try and get around the tiger. It took a small swipe in his general direction but there was fog in the movement. It shook its head curtly.

‘Your reign?’ Arthur mocked, gripping at Swan’s fingers. Over the man’s shoulder he saw another yacht departing the harbour.

(Fuuuuck!)

‘The only thing raining here is pieces of your bloody Palace! The whole mountain’s gonna collapse in on itself soon! And you’ll be king of fuckin’ nowhere! You’ve had yer sick fun, mate. But playtime’s over.’

‘NEVER!’ Mr Swan somehow managed to lift Arthur’s entire weight and throw him some twenty paces across the lawns, the big man thudding hard and skidding in turf, his head landing just inches from a freshly sprouted bubble of lava.

Sweet rolled and got himself up, but not before Swan had returned to deliver a powerful kick in the older man’s side.

‘Uugh!’ Arthur coughed, spittle flying. He swung back with a left hook but Swan dodged easily, his movements those of a trained fighter.

When Manni tried to intervene he was met with another of the tiger’s lazy swipes.

Then came an uppercut under Arthur’s excessive double chin, so forceful it actually lifted him from the ground an inch or so. He landed back on his huge arse. Again he scrabbled up, righted himself and tried to lunge with a tackle, but Swan was adept at this, in clear possession of martial arts skills middle-aged, huge Arthur couldn’t hope to match.

Before Sweet knew it his head had been beaten sideways by a roundhouse kick. He spat blood.

‘Get the fuck away from him!’ Manni roared. ‘If you’re gonna fight someone, fight me, you fucking coward! I’ll snap you in half!’

But the tiger blocked access.

‘Oh, I haven’t forgotten about you, my handsome friend,’ Swan replied gleefully, stomping across the lawn to a downed Arthur. ‘After Vashti’s had her fun, I’ll be there to finish the job, don’t you worry about that.’

Sweet groaned to his feet, wiped his bloody mouth beneath the ‘tache. ‘Crowe’s dead,’ he wheezed. ‘Your little pet project in the basement went out with a bang. What do ya think caused all this?’ He gestured broadly around at the chaos - the collapsing palace, the lava, the cowardly staff still fleeing in their droves. Another yacht was leaving.

Something passed over Swan’s crazed face and was gone. ‘Please,’ he drawled. ‘Piteous lies won’t save your skin now, Detective. Elias Crowe has been granted the gift of eternal life, unlimited power. And in time that power will be mine, even if I have to force a thousand more fatboys to recite the lines…’

He reached for Arthur’s shirt, the big man able to bat away the first attempt but not the second. Swan headbutted Sweet, causing the latter to gush out a choked breath.

‘GET YOUR FUCKING HANDS OFF HIM!’ Manni bellowed, wanting nothing more than to kick this goddamned tiger out of the way, but the risk of being shredded was too high, even if the big cat had been drugged in some fashion.

Swan actually did relinquish his grip, but only to step back and administer a brutal kick to Sweet’s belly, knocking the big man back, wringing more winded breaths from him. And more bloodied spittle.

‘You’ve meddled in my organisation enough, Detectives,’ Swan went on, in a tone at once casual and unhinged, ‘It’s high time your annoying trifles were brought to an end, hmm?’

He rounded on Sweet with another punch across the jaw, spinning him somewhat with the force.

‘But it’s not your organisation, though, is it?’ Dey called over the sounds of growling and snarling. ‘Elias Crowe told us - just before your doctor friend took him down - you’re not the head of The Rookery!’

Swan had been about to follow up with a right jab, but stopped.

‘You’re not the man at the top, Swan, are you?’ Manni pressed on, anything to keep Arthur from further harm. ‘Crowe IS dead, and he told us all about your sad, desperate attempts to gain even more power, making all the lads perform some ritual like it’s actually gonna achieve anything. Isn’t having your own fucking island enough?’

‘You have…,’ Swan’s eyes lost focus for a moment. ‘You have no idea… NO idea of what you speak, boy! You have NO IDEA how long I toiled and clawed my way here, to-‘

Much to Mr Swan’s shock, a slice of cheese slapped against his chest, remaining there, moist and flat.

‘What the blazes?‘

Arthur, who’d procured it from among the foodstuffs littered along the cave floor of Crowe’s lair, and who’d pocketed, and subsequently just thrown it at Mr Swan, shouted, ‘Oi, Kitty… Fetch!’

And perhaps the lure of fresh food was enough to override any loyalty to her master Vashti might have had, or perhaps it was the medicated stupor Dr Nightingale had administered, or both, because she quite firmly twisted her head toward the cheese resting there against Swan’s chest, and broke into a loping run.

‘No!’ Swan panicked, picking at the cheese. He tried to whistle, managing only a scared Fffff! ‘No! Stop! STOP!’

Vashti leaped, teeth and claws readied to rend.

And Arthur had to look away, grimacing while Mr Swan screamed, his own pet devouring him.

Manni quickly ran to his partner, wrapped an arm across Sweet’s bulk and promptly guided him away, letting the last of Mr Swan’s gurgling death rattle bubble out from beneath the hungry tiger.

‘You alright?’ he asked while they stole towards the dwindling harbour.

‘I’ll be fine,’ Sweet nodded, wincing, hobbling. ‘I’ll get a new jaw. The further we get from Kitty’s lunchtime, the better.’

The harbour had been all but entirely gutted out, the bulk of The Island’s staff having fled, requisitioning yachts as they found them, but one craft remained. It wasn’t the biggest but it looked of a decent enough capacity. Arthur could only hope the reason it had been left behind wasn’t owing to a lack of fuel.

‘Sweet, look!’

Off in the distance, a little round blonde figure appeared to be leading a crowd, each successive row more overweight than the first. Some wore medical gowns, cannulas flapping. There was the blob with numerous tubes, waddling, huffing. One young man looked to be the sleepiest human being ever to walk the earth. But they were here. They’d made it out.

‘Mr Arthur, Sir!’ Lucas called out, waving. ‘Wait for us!’

‘Lucas,’ Manni breathed. ‘He did it. He bloody did it!’

Sweet let an exhausted breath leave his breast. Every inch of him was pounding with pain. He could still taste the blood in his mouth. But it might just have all been worth it…

‘He did it,’ he echoed. Smiling hurt too much, so he settled for a nasal huff. That hurt too. ‘Right, lad, you go make sure they’re alright. I’ll go and secure the-‘

About three feet in front of them, the concrete harbour suddenly exploded, a jet of lava shooting up into the sky.

Sweet and Dey jumped back, the former instinctively laying a protective arm before his partner.

‘Fuckin’ hell!’

And Manni went to say something. But whatever that may have been, it was lost, because what had gone up must come down, and a falling chunk of concrete came hurtling back out of the air, shooting straight into Manni’s head.

His world went black.

****

(3 weeks later)

Waves.

Undulation. Rocking.

Seabirds squabbling. Briny scent. Salt and sweetness.

Darkness. Pain.

More waves.

And voices.

A woman. A man.

Arthur.

Arthur…

Arthur’s homely breath, the touch of his porky hand through Manni’s hair. The tingle of moustache and lips against Manni’s forehead.

Light seeping in. Soft. Unfocused.

‘Uhhhh…’

There was a gremlin in Dey’s skull playing the bongos.

‘Shhh shhh shhh,’ Sweet whispered, again kissing, again stroking. ‘It’s alright… You’re alright…’

Manni was in a room, in a bed, both entirely unfamiliar, gently swaying.

Arthur was stood by his side wearing a thin, careworn smile, steaming mug of tea in hand. A chunky knit fisherman’s jumper stretched over his almighty belly. One side of his face bore the trace of a bruise not yet ready to depart, all yellow and purple.

‘Wha…,’ Manni’s lips released. But even that extracted a cost. Discomfort resurfaced within. He blinked against invading sunlight pouring into this unsteady room.

‘Just relax,’ Sweet told him quietly, and performed his usual slurp from the mug.

Manni took a strange kind of comfort from the sound, and found that it grounded him somewhat in this unrecognisable environ. He blew out his cheeks. A sharp snap of pain met his touch when he felt at his forehead.

‘Oww…’

‘I know,’ Sweet said in a soothing tone. ‘You took a right proper knock on the noggin.’

Slowly, dizzily, Dey propped himself upright, furling bedsheets and pillows in the process.

‘Where… are we…?’

Arthur’s thick fingers returned to mingle among Manni’s locks. Dey reached out to lay his own hand upon Sweet’s, careful to avoid the sensitive part of his cranium this time.

‘We’re on one of Swan’s old yachts,’ Arthur explained. ‘We got out.’

That’s right. The vision melded itself in Dey’s mind. Swan Palace. The fight. The harbour. The escape…

‘Lucas…!’ he suddenly remembered.

‘Shhhh, he’s okay,’ Sweet told him gently. ‘He’s okay. We dropped him and the others off further up the coast.’ He appeared to deliberate, perhaps not wanting to bombard Dey with everything all at once. But he went on, ‘He couldn’t find his mate. But we got about two-hundred-and-fifty blokes off The Island. Lucas reckoned that was pretty much all of ‘em…’

Dey looked to him. ‘Bloody hell…’

Arthur was so handsome, sat there in the sunlight sipping his tea.

‘Where…?’

‘We dropped ‘em off,’ Sweet repeated patiently, cupping Manni’s stubbled jaw.

‘You said… the coast…?’

‘That, uh, might take a bit of explaining,’ the big man responded, slurping again. ‘You want a cuppa? I’ll do you a fresh brew, might help to wake you up a bit, and I’ll talk you through it all?’

Manni breathed, smarting, blinking. He nodded, ‘Okay…’

And Arthur heaved himself up, leaning over to kiss Dey’s crown before plodding heavily from this strange room.

‘How long… was I out…?’ Manni called to his wide behind.

‘About three weeks,’ Sweet called back, voice fading. ‘You was in and out.’

(Three weeks? Jesus bloody Christ…)

No wonder he felt so weak. Had Arthur been looking after him this whole time? The last thing Dey could remember was reaching the harbour, and something exploding…

Gulls cawed outside the window. Through the blinding light, Manni thought he could see the outline of a cobbled port, a fishing village maybe. Faint voices speaking a language he didn’t understand. He smelled fish, crab, seaweed. Notions of swinging himself from the bed to go take a looksee evaporated as quickly as they’d formed; his body was too sluggish for the task.

When Arthur returned with an extra steaming mug, Manni observed that the big man’s own had a bold ‘A’ printed onto the side. He laid Dey’s tea beside the bed.

‘Here y’are, sunshine. Milk’n’three sugars, just how you like it.’

Manni thanked him, and nodded to Arthur’s ‘A’. ‘That’s cute…’

Sweet raised the mug with a cheeky smile and a wink. ‘S’good, innit? Linda found it at the local tat shop.’

‘Linda…,’ Dey echoed, a memory stirred. ‘As in your sister?’

‘’Ave yer tea,’ Arthur nodded.

The tea was strong and sweet, indeed just how Manni liked it. As predicted, it brought about a slow return of his senses, as only tea can for a Brit.

‘You said she lived in Italy,’ Dey went on, finding his voice a little more.

‘She does,’ Sweet smiled. His eyes, from behind newly repaired spectacles, flicked to the window.

And the penny dropped.

‘Wait… We’re in Italy, right now?’ Dey wanted to leave the bed and take in the view, but his partner softly objected with a fat hand.

‘You just… rest up, alright?’

‘But - what? How?’

‘Drink yer tea and do as you’re told,’ Sweet chuckled. ‘We came down this way in the yacht when we left The Island. Dropped off Lucas and the others first, then I steered us down the coast, this way, to see Linda and her ‘usband Marco. They got a little house in town just along the way from here. They’ve been helping me to… look after you. Among other things.’

For a moment or two concern passed his bruised, chubby face, as though he’d said too much too soon.

‘It’s okay,’ Manni reassured him. ‘I’m… taking it all in. I’m okay.’

Then Arthur leaned in for a proper kiss on the lips, remaining there for a time. Dey felt his fat, warm cheeks envelope his own.

‘We ain’t far from San Lucido,’ the older man explained. ‘It’s just South of ‘ere.’

This time Manni felt ready to test his legs, now buoyed with caffeine. His partner made a few cautious objections but Dey found that he was able to lug his body from the bed and stand upright. After a spell of dizziness the going wasn’t too bad.

Through the window lay a beautiful, quaint Italian town. People milling, chit-chatting, fishermen hauling crates of catches. Cobbles the colour of terracotta. Slated rooftops. Alleys of strewn washing lines and painted shutters.

‘You didn’t half give me a fright, getting knocked out like that,’ Arthur sidled up beside him, warm hand on the small of Manni’s back, nestled between the wide laterals and the spongier lovehandles of his strongman frame.

Though Dey suspected he must surely have lost some weight over his three-week convalescence.

‘I’m sorry,’ he told Arthur, who laughed a small laugh.

‘Ain’t your fault, sweetheart. We was just glad you were still breathing.’

‘Where’s Linda and her husband now?’

‘Out on the old supply run.’ Arthur slurped happily again. ‘If you feel up for bunging some clothes on, I got summin’ to show you…’

And so Manni went about dressing himself, finding his worn clothes folded atop a smart-looking cabinet in this room - the master suite of the yacht, and quite luxurious it was too. Manni felt the mobile phone still bulging in his old trouser pocket - reminding him that he owed his parents a phonecall - and checked the screen; all the photos and videos he’d made were mercifully present. All the evidence he and Arthur had unearthed on Rookery activity within The Island, it was all still there. He pocketed that thought along with the phone for the time being. There’d be much to do on that in time, no doubt.

Carrying the remainder of his tea, he left the room to wander the halls of his new surroundings, finding a clean, modern opulence throughout; multiple rooms, facilities. It made ‘Juicy Julie’ look like a dinghy by comparison. Here and there a half-finished biscuit packet or crumb-laden plate revealed evidence of Arthur’s activity while Dey had been out for the count.

He found the big man outside on deck, standing by the gangplank with his ‘A’ mug, looking all round and gorgeous.

‘This way,’ the big man said, leading Dey down the plank and along the mooring some, until they’d drawn up parallel beside the yacht’s hull.

It was a resplendent craft, that much was certain. And a good size. Manni could see how it’d housed some 250 escapees now. But it was the bright yellow lettering against the gunmetal grey paintwork that stood out the most. It appeared to be a more recent addition.

‘I had that painted on a coupla days ago,’ Sweet informed proudly, raising his mug to the font. ‘Local bloke come and done it.’

Manni peered, and read aloud. ‘The Golden Baheliya…’

(Huh.)

The fog might’ve been clearing from his mind, but it wasn’t immediately obvious why Arthur had gone to the trouble of having a new name painted onto this yacht. He wasn’t planning on keeping the thing, surely…?

‘Baheliya,’ Manni read again. ‘That’s a Hindi word. It can mean… like a… fowler, or…’ Another penny dropped ‘Or a bird-catcher...’

He saw Sweet’s smile extend, saw that twinkle in the older man’s eye, glistening in the Italian sunshine.

‘Arthur, what have you done?’

‘Well…,’ Sweet laid a thick arm across his partner’s expansive shoulders. ‘I was thinkin’… About what we was gonna do next, you know… I was thinkin’ about… maybe sailin’ around, solving mysteries…’

The big man let the words hang, still smirking.

‘Solving - You’re being serious?’ Manni replied.

‘Why not?’ Arthur countered.

(Why not…?)

Dey looked to the words again. Baheliya. Bird-catcher…

‘What if we set up our own detective agency?’ Arthur said, clearly espousing a speech he’d been itching to make. ‘We could take on cases by day, and go lookin’ for “birds” in between?’

‘Like hunting down Rookery masters, you mean? Something like that?’

‘Summing like that, aye.’

The sparkle in Sweet’s eye was entirely tied to a life led solving crimes, unmasking secrets. He lived for this, Manni knew. Being a detective was everything to Arthur Sweet. And just seeing how it brought the man to life unlocked something in his own heart.

(God, just seeing Sweet like this…)

‘But how would we even…? I mean, there’s like a million things…,’ Dey started.

‘Thaaaat’s where Linda’s ‘usband Marco comes in,’ Arthur replied, draining his mug. ‘He’s, uh, a man of… ways and means, so to speak…’

‘You said he was a “wheeler dealer knob”,’ Manni laughed.

‘He is. Just the kind of wheeler dealer knob you need when taking, uh, ownership of a yacht, for instance. Settin’ up shop in a new country. Tyin’ up loose ends with our old jobs, that sorta thing. He’s very good with the old… slippery paperwork, shall we say.’

Dey took in his big, beautiful partner, stood here by the sparkling water, waves lapping, seagulls circling. He’d never seen the man look so… alive.

(And don’t I want it too? Wouldn’t I just love to nail more Rookery bastards and help others in need?)

‘Could we really do this?’ Manni asked Sweet.

And Arthur nodded, pushing his repaired glasses back into position.

(All we’ve been through together. All we’ve seen. Terrible things. Impossible things. If there’s more of that to come, I never want to live through it with anyone else…)

‘Arthur, I love you,’ he blurted out.

He’d shocked himself. Hadn’t meant to say that at all.

But suddenly it was true. And it had always been true.

He loved Arthur Sweet with every fibre of his being.

Arthur pulled Manni into the biggest, warmest, tightest hug, and kissed him, wiping away the younger man’s tears, and echoing the sentiment of love.

They kissed deeply, passionately, lovingly, right there on the dock, with bemused Italians offering parting glances.

Manni didn’t care. He loved Arthur, all of him, every fat, heavy, grumpy, joyful ounce of him.

And Arthur loved Manni Dey. Together they were going to become detectives again, sailing around, solving mysteries.

And taking down The Rookery.