Page 5 of The Triangle

Some people harbor their negative feelings far too close to their hearts. And that is simply terrible business.

“Wallace, my china, you didn’t come to Cape Town for this! You came for product! Let’s—”

“Product you’re fuckin’ light on!”

“Hey! I’m a lot of things but I’m not a cheat, man! Maybe it’s just your scale! Do you have it set to ounces and not grams, by chance?”

“Suck my dick!”

“C’mon, bru! Honestly! Let’s just lay down guns and talk for a tick!”

“Fuck you, bitch!” And the machine gun commences again.

Yes. Fuck me, indeed.

“Lars? You’ll have to yell! What happened?”

“Christine took a tumble,” is what I hear in reply.

And then I hear nothing else. Not the sound of Lars on the phone. Not the machine-gun fire. Not the screaming and yelling. Nothing.

I’ve known people to describe a sensation like getting cold chills up and down their spines when they are confronted with situations or information that might give them worry. I don’t. Get cold chills, I mean.

No, when confronted with information that taxes my nervous system, I get something akin to a throbbing headache but that pulses in my limbs instead. It feels like my body is swelling to twice its normal size. I imagine it’s what that oke Bruce Banner feels like when he turns into that Hulk fucker.

“Fok do you mean, ‘she took a tumble,’ bru?”

“Details still coming in. Seems she wasn’t exactly where she was supposed to be.”

“What do you mean? Where the fok was she?”

“She took care of the thing she was supposed to but then she told Reggie and Lex there was something else she had to handle.”

I can’t process everything he’s saying to me. Because it’s confusing. And because of the fire fight. And because Hulk is taking over. I cut to the chase.

“Is Christine all right, man?”

“Yes and no.”

“Fok does that mean?”

I don’t like losing control in front of anyone. But right now, with the chaos swirling all around, I don’t think anyone will notice.

“It means that… we’re not totally sure! Somebody…”

“Somebody what, bru?”

The laaitie has his head poked from round the SUV. There’s a red dot in the center of his forehead. In an act of impulse, I spin round from my metal barrier and immediately spy the oke holding the pistol with the laser sight attached. I have no laser sight attached to my pistol. Because it’s foolish and serves largely to just give away your position. Also, it has always suggested to me that it signals that you don’t know how to aim terribly well.

I do know how to aim terribly well.

I pop a single shot into the head of the oke who don’t know how to shoot, look at the laaitie again to make sure he’s still there, see that he is and is looking mightily and rightly grateful, and I duck back behind my improvised safety wall.

“Somebody fokken WHAT?” I ask again.

“It seems like somebody might have thrown her off a roof.”

If I really was that Hulk fucker, this would be the point where the buttons would begin popping off my shirt and the seams of my lekker suit jacket would start to rip.