A Good Man in Africa by William Boyd

and the block farthest away from the Commission a sizeable dump had grown up over the years, on which sat two wheelless car chassis and which provided the main source of nourishment for the various goats, dogs and chickens that roamed about it unhindered.
    As Morgan approached the quarter he became aware of the sounds of muted commotion. He could hear the babble of excitedvoices and a soft chanting wail of lamenting women. He began to feel a little nervous, considering for the first time what exactly he was going to meet. He was about to come up against death, after all, something he hadn’t done before. The death of Innocence. The improbable symbolic portentousness of this did not bring a smile to his lips. He walked round the corner of the nearest block and dimly made out a crowd of approximately thirty people gathered around the far end of the laterite compound near the base of the cotton tree. He walked across the compound, carefully stepping over the sanitary ditch. He felt a slight twinge of alarm. He noticed some mothers with younger children sitting around lanterns on the small verandahs that ran the length of the blocks. As he approached the large group by the tree a figure detached itself from it and came towards him. It was, he soon saw, the policeman, dressed in immaculately starched khaki uniform of shirt, shorts and knee socks. In the star-light Morgan could see his black boots gleaming. He carried a torch and there was a long truncheon slung at his belt.
    “Evening, constable,” Morgan said, all calm authority. “I’m Mr. Leafy from the Commission. What exactly’s going on?”
    “Ah. The woman is dead, sah. Lightning done kill her one time.” He turned and shone his torch. The crowd was not clustered around the body as Morgan had thought but was standing in appalled silence a safe ten yards away. The torch beam flicked across the black mass of Innocence’s body and there were appreciative gasps from the onlookers. Innocence had been struck down in the gap between the end of one of the blocks and the rough concrete base of the wash-place.
    Morgan swallowed. “I suppose we’d better have a closer look.” He didn’t know why he supposed this, but it was all he could think of doing. “May I?” He took the constable’s torch and advanced towards the body. There was a collective intake of breath and much shifting about from the crowd as he did so. Morgan realised, with some alarm, as he approached that this—Innocence—was the first dead person he had ever encountered and he wasn’t quite sure what precisely he was expecting to see or how he would react.
    Before he could get close enough, however, someone ran out of the crowd and tugged at his sleeve. It was Isaac, Morgan saw on turning round, one of the Commission’s doormen andgeneral factotum. He was a solemn-looking man with a Hitlerian toothbrush moustache.
    “Mr. Leafy sah,” he said. “I go beg you, sah. Don’t totch her. Make you nevah totch her, sah.” His voice was serious.
    Morgan looked at him in surprise. “Don’t worry, Isaac,” he said. “I’ve no intention of touching her.”
    “Be careful, sah, I beg you.” Isaac’s eyes were wide with warning. “Dis he be Shango killing. Nevah totch the body.”
    “Sorry?” Morgan said, keeping his torch beam well away from the inert dark lump that was Innocence’s body. “A Shango killing? Who the hell is Shango?”
    Isaac pointed skywards. Morgan looked up at the stars. “Shango is God,” Isaac said piously. “Shango is God for lightning.” He illustrated this with a jagged sweep of his arm. “Shango done kill this woman. You cannot totch her. No person can totch her.”
    Oh my sweet bloody Christ, Morgan thought sourly to himself, no wonder that sly bastard Fanshawe backed out of this one. Sweet effing Jesus. “OK, Isaac,” he said resignedly. “I won’t touch, but I have to look.” He walked up to Innocence’s body and squatted on his haunches about three feet