‘If you have to spend a weekend alone, with only one book for company, you’d want one that reads as slickly and as compellingly as Killer Country‘.
Leon de Kock :Sunday Independent
‘Thrillers set in Cape Town, in the hands of consummate writers like Nicol, mean you never see the city in in quite the same way again.’
Vivien Horler:Cape Argus
Crime Beat gives readers a taste of the action in Killer Country, the second in Mike Nicol’s Revenge trilogy, publlshed locally by Umuzi.
Sheemina February told Spitz to meet her at Rhodes Memorial. At the bottom of the steps. That way she could watch him approach for no reason other than she wanted the drop on him. For the hell of it. Wanted to clip down the steps towards him saying, ‘Bang, bang, Spitz boyo, you’re dead.’
She got there fifteen minutes early. Banked on being five minutes ahead of him. Knowing he’d case the area first as a matter of habit. She left her car in the upper parking lot near the restaurant, took the path to the memorial, waited in the shadow behind the columns. Gazed across the suburbs and the industrial belt towards the Durbanville hills, beyond that to the Hottentots Holland and the winelands. Thought about money. That of all human inventions money had the measure of each person’s heart. Hers was expensive.
She watched Spitz drive up in his white hire, park beneath the stone pines in the main lot. He got out looked around for her black Beemer. Only seven cars there, none of them a BM. At this hour of the morning no one hanging around either. Too early for tourists. Probably the car owners were walkers, strolling the contour paths, enjoying themselves.
Spitz walked quickly to the lower entrance that led onto the flagstones below the steps. A viewpoint with a wider aspect than the memorial. Almost a bay to bay sweep: west coast to Hangklip. He took this in, pivoted to look at the memorial, Devil’s Peak rising behind it. Sheemina February wondering what he’d make of a classical folly with columns, steps leading up flanked by walls, eight lions at rest on them. In front, on a plinth, a horse and rider, the rider shading his eyes, squinting at the hinterland. Spitz turned back to the view.
Sheemina February watched him. An elegant man, the crease on his trousers exact. Black polished shoes. The bandage on his little finger encased in a leather sheath. A slender man, and graceful.
She waited until his back was to her before she came out of the shadows and down the steps, her heels clicking on the granite. Spitz spun round almost immediately.
‘Do you know, Spitz,’ she called out, ‘there are forty-nine steps. One for each year of his life.’
‘Who is this?’ said Spitz.
‘Cecil Rhodes. Used to come up here to contemplate, according to the tourist guides. Stare out at the dark continent and think of money.’ She came level with the hitman. ‘Worked for him.’
‘But he did not make even fifty years.’
‘Neither did Obed Chocho.’
Spitz looked away. ‘I was not able to…’
‘Oh, I’m not blaming you Spitz.’ Sheemina February touched his sleeve with a gloved hand. ‘Things have worked out better than I planned. And for this I have you to thank all along the way. Last night especially. Without you the judge would not have been so … accommodating. Men are much more inclined to listen to other men I find. Particularly to one who’s pointing a gun.’
She paused. The dull growl of the city filled her silence, and closer birdsong, insistent sunbirds.
‘Up here,’ she said, ‘you can understand his point. Old Cape to Cairo Cecil. The birds make it peaceful.’
‘What do you want to tell me?’ said Spitz.
She sat down on the low parapet, faced the memorial. Patted the stone alongside her. Spitz sat.
‘Obed had a contract with you on Mace Bishop and Pylon Buso, how much was that for?’
‘There was no money.’
‘You were doing it for free? You?’
‘Because I had spoken his name to them.’
She crossed her legs. ‘Obed getting his payback. Fair enough. And now, are you going to honour it?’
‘There is no point.’
‘I suppose not. But there would be a point if I offered you money.’
‘Of course.’
‘So, I will offer you one hundred and fifty thousand, not to kill them, but to kill the wife of Mace Bishop.’
‘That is more than my fee.’
‘I know. There is a catch.’
‘What is this catch?’
‘I don’t want you to use a gun.’
‘My weapon is a pistol.’
‘I know, Spitz. But think about it. You kill her with a .22 or any other calibre and Mace Bishop will not even stop to think who did it. He will think Spitz-the-Trigger. What’s more he knows exactly where to find you. Before you got home he’d be waiting inside your apartment.’
Spitz stroked his bandaged finger to ease the throbbing. ‘Which is the weapon you want me to use?’
‘A knife.’
‘I do not use a knife. It is too dangerous.’
‘That is why I’m paying you a lot of money.’ She smiled at him. ‘Let me be generous. How about two hundred thousand? I can afford it.’
She watched Spitz think about this. Not a twitch on his face. No frown. No tightening of the lips. She liked that, the calm contemplation.
‘Once,’ she said, ‘you used a knife.’ She drew a finger across her throat. ‘Your trademark. No noise. Spitz the silent steps out of the shadows and ssssh the blade slits open the jugular. I know about that Spitz.’ She reached out, lightly squeezed his forearm with her gloved hand. ‘I might, too, Spitz, have a position for you. In my organisation. A career change. The comfort of a salary. Medical aid. Shares. A pension. The full rootee tootee of the late bourgeois world.’
Smiled at Spitz staring at her, his lips glistening.
‘Eventually he said, ‘Alright for that much I will use a knife.’
‘There is another condition,’ said Sheemina February. ‘It must be in her pottery studio.’
‘It has to be in some place.’
‘The pottery studio is underneath their house.’
‘I do not like that.’
‘Can’t be helped. I’m willing to pay a lot of money for this, Spitz. Offering you a future. There have to be some risks.’
She waited. When Spitz made no comment, held out a photograph: Mace, Oumou, Christa eating breakfast beside a swimming pool.
‘Happy family. They live on the mountainside. The studio has an access onto the lower garden. The only other access is a spiral staircase inside the house. A man with your resources shouldn’t have any problems getting in.’ She dangled some keys from her gloved hand. ‘But these may be a help.’ Spitz reached out, she dropped them into his hand. From a coat pocket took out a barber’s razor. ‘As might this.’
‘No,’ he said, ‘this is not a knife.’
Sheemina let it lie bone-white against the black leather of her gloved palm. ‘You thought differently once, I am given to understand.’ She closed her fist, used the fingers of her good hand to open the blade. ‘This is a special razor. It is not something I picked up in a junk store. It has provenance, Spitz. A history. A memento you should leave at the scene.’ She held it towards him.
‘When I used knives I was a younger person.’
She laid it against his hand, the blade’s edge lightly on his skin. ‘Take it. This is how I want it.’
‘You are a demanding woman.’
‘Not demanding, Spitz. Insistent. But generous too. I pay for that over the odds.’
Spitz closed the blade into the handle. Lifted it from her fingers.
Sheemina stroked his arm. ‘I’m impressed. Now listen.’ She gave him more details: access, the Bishop routine, the best time to do it. ‘I must go now, Spitz.’ Stood looking down at him. ‘I’m sorry we didn’t get to have a drink on the town but under the circumstances this would no longer be a good idea.’ She held out her hand. ‘I must say you have been an easy person to work with. My offer remains open for the future.’
‘Please,’ said Spitz, keeping a grip on her hand even as she gently pulled away.
‘No, Spitz,’ she said, using her gloved hand to free herself. ‘Some things are not to be.’ She headed for the steps. ‘When the job is done, you’ll get the money in cash at JB’s. Special courier. While you’re drinking a latte. After that I’ll be in touch.’ She pointed at Devil’s Peak. ‘Maybe you’ll be able to get up the mountain this time. It’s a wonderful view from the top.’
It is always interesting to see how thriller writers process success says William Saunderson-Meyer, writing in his Killer Thriller column for the 
Andrew Marjoribanks of 
In her column this month, Joanne Hichens takes a look at the importance of the victim and what the implications are if the victim is killed off by page three – a strategy suggested to Ian Rankin by a US agent as a way of pulling in more readers. Now there’s a proposition… 
The long awaited sequel to 
Couple of weeks ago I called around the publishers to see what was upcoming for the 2010 crime fiction year. Well, it turns out that I’m kick-starting the programme with the publication of the second book in my Revenge Trilogy, 
