Bitter Paradise , livre ebook

Bitter Paradise
A Dr. Zol Szabo Medical Mystery
Ross Pennie



Contents
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Chapter 42
Chapter 43
Chapter 44
Chapter 45
Chapter 46
Chapter 47
Chapter 48
Chapter 49
Chapter 50
Chapter 51
Chapter 52
Chapter 53
Chapter 54
Chapter 55
Acknowledgements
About the Author
Copyright


Chapter 1
Hosam ended the call, and from the back of the shop Max watched him scowl into some dark, malignant place. It was like the man was staring into a black hole — maybe Monocerotis or Cygnus X-1 — in a remote sector of the universe. Behind him, the dusky red spatters on the front door looked almost dry. But the splotches on the picture window still glistened.
“What did he say?” Max called, trying but failing to suppress the shivers. “Is h—” His voice cracked, and all that came out was a frog’s croak. At fourteen, that happened way too often. He cleared his throat with a short cough and tried again. “Is he coming?”
Hosam seemed incapable of hearing, his mind stuck in another galaxy. But his left thumb was visible in this one, and it was stroking his thick black moustache. His comb and scissors were here too, poking from the pocket of his blood-soaked apron. The front-desk phone was tight in his fist, and there was no missing Marwan’s blood clotted on the keypad.
“Hosam?”
After a while, he put down the phone and rubbed the back of his neck, staining it with more of Marwan’s blood. He steadied himself against the desk and jerked his head as if tumbling out of a bad dream. His deep-set eyes, usually a light greyish-blue, had turned as black as the muzzles on Max’s second-favourite Fortnite weapon, the double barrel shotgun.
Eventually, Hosam blinked. “Yes, Max. Your father, he says he is coming.”
“Right now?”
“Inshallah.”
Inshallah, that was for sure. And though Max never went to church, he hoped God or Allah, or both together, were pulling hard on whatever strings it took to get his dad here fast.
Max turned to Travis sitting beside him in the row of chairs set against the back wall for customers waiting for a haircut. Max raised the edge of the damp facecloth he’d been pressing against his forehead. “How . . . how is it?”
Travis leaned in and lifted the cloth for a good look. Squinting into the wound, he whispered, “The bleeding’s stopped. Well, mostly. And I don’t think I see any bone or brain tissue.”
“Geez,” Max said.
Travis pressed the makeshift dressing back into place. “You were out of it for a few seconds after you hit your head. I’m betting you cracked your skull.”
“Thanks a lot, Trav. That makes me feel so much better.”
A master blogger and Snapchatter, Max’s best bud and video game squadmate was sometimes given to exaggerating details for the sake of his audience and his ratings. Hosam had examined the gash with a more professional eye a few minutes earlier. He’d said Max was going to need only a few stitches and he should keep pressure on the wound. He’d mentioned nothing about visible brain tissue or a fractured skull. But he had said Max would have to come back another day for his haircut. He’d finished Trav’s moments before Marwan’s attackers had rushed in, so Trav’s low fade was already done.
Sitting next to Travis was Marwan’s twenty-something client. He was rubbing his face with one of Hosam’s damp cloths and struggling to appear calm and manly. But it was impossible to look even close to cool when your high fade was barely halfway done and blood from your barber’s arteries was sprayed across your cheeks. The warm towels that Hosam had draped over their shoulders were supposed to help the three of them relax and stop shivering. But the only thing Max needed right now was the sight of his dad walking through the front door.
Ibrahim, the shop’s head barber, had been standing at a display case in the back half of the shop immediately before, during, and after the attack. He’d been stocking the shelves with grooming stuff and trying way too hard to act as if nothing was happening. And now, his hands were shaking more than ever as he arranged and rearranged the tubes, bottles, and jars. He seemed to think that rows of perfectly aligned hair products might compensate for the horrific spectacle of his shop’s junior barber splayed on the floor, his blood splattered in every direction.
Kneeling in the middle of the shop beside their gear, and still working on Marwan, were the two paramedics who’d been there for what seemed like ages but was probably only a few minutes. Max had no idea whether the young barber was dead or alive. Marwan’s blood, in streaks and dark pools, was splotched across the floor, the walls, the arms of his barber chair. His now bloody-cheeked client had been in that chair not twenty minutes earlier when the two men in black hoodies rushed in. One of them, built like a super-tall wrestler, wore a WWE bandana to hide his face. He grabbed Marwan and pinned his arms behind his back. The other guy — skinny frame, tanned skin, long nose — shouted some sort of warning meant for everyone in the shop. Max didn’t understand the words but recognized the language. He heard it here often.
The skinny guy spat in Marwan’s face then set his jaw and whipped out something from beneath his shirt. At first, Max couldn’t see what it was, but when the guy raised it high above his head, he saw the naked blade of a mean-looking bowie knife. Skinny Guy’s eyes were on fire as the polished steel flashed for everyone to see.
The man lowered the knife, held it directly in front of Marwan’s face, and muttered something it didn’t take a linguist to know was menacing. The degree of terror bursting through Marwan’s pores was something Max had never witnessed before, not even in the gruesomest scenes in Trav’s extensive slasher-movie library. Marwan blinked at the spit gumming his eyes and nodded eagerly as if pledging to obey any warning his assailants might deliver from now until eternity.
Skinny Guy smirked then took a long, admiring look at his weapon. He raised an eyebrow and ran a finger the full length of the blade. Three times, he smiled and adjusted his stance, his black Chuck Taylor high tops squealing against the floor. Then, as quick as a samurai, he slashed Marwan’s left arm above the elbow. Before the helpless barber could even wince, Skinny Guy crisscrossed Marwan’s chest with the blade. Marwan screamed, and blood welled through the rips in his polo shirt, turning it from electric blue to magenta.
When the knife went for Marwan’s neck, Max’s breakfast launched itself into his gullet. The acidic mess of Cheerios and OJ burned his throat, but he managed to force it down again. His eyes were another matter. They refused to let him watch any more of this. His lids screwed themselves into light-tight mode while his hands put vice grips on his chair.
He’d read somewhere that silence could be deafening, especially when you had your eyes closed. With Marwan’s screams snuffed by the bowie knife, a terrorizing stillness descended like a suffocating blanket.
After what felt like an ice age, a sickening drip, drip, drip invaded the silence.
Clothing rustled.
Something thudded to the floor.
High tops squealed as they strode across the room.
Max’s heartbeat slammed into overdrive. The attackers must be closing in. They were choosing their next victim before picking off the witnesses one by one. Suddenly, sitting with your eyes closed was infinitely scarier than not knowing what was happening.
He forced his eyes open and willed them to focus. All he could see of the assailants was the backs of their hoodies. They weren’t eyeing further victims but hightailing it through the front door. Marwan was on his back, next to his chair, motionless except for the twin arcs that throbbed from his carotids like maniacal firehoses.
The coppery smell of all that blood hung in the air along with the reek of the intruders’ chewing tobacco. Max had friends who chawed because they thought it was cool. Right now, the familiar stink was the furthest from cool it could possibly be.
The moment the men were out the door, Hosam reacted as fast as a combat medic in a video game. He grabbed a stack of towels then cut off Marwan’s shirt with his scissors. After a quick look at the wounds, he whipped off his belt and tightened it around Marwan’s half-severed arm. While he was staunching the blood with the towels and the tourniquet, he told Ibrahim to call 911. He had to remind Ibrahim a minute later because the head barber, still clutching his shampoo bottles, seemed suddenly frightened of his own telephone.
No one in the shop, except for poor Marwan, had made eye contact with the attackers. No one had said a word to them. Now that Max had a chance to think about it, he wondered if the skinny slasher was the guy called Ghazwan who’d worked briefly at the shop a few months back. He’d never cut Max’s hair, nor Trav’s, but had spent most of his time sweeping the floor. He hadn’t smiled and had never said a word in English. As far as Max could tell, Ghazwan spoke only Arabic. The other barbers spoke it too. Hosam had taught Max a few Arabic phrases such as Good morning , Thanks