A familiar ring to it.

If you kill a person without lawful reason, the punishment, if you are convicted of the killing, is death. The State, in the guise of the National Police Service shall investigate the killing and arrest you if you are their best suspect, and the Office of the Director of Public Prosecutions shall prosecute you before a magistrate. If you are convicted, the only sentence that can be imposed is death.

That is the theory, at least. If you are poor and unremarkable, only rich and remarkable in the eyes of those nearest and dearest to you, it is unlikely that your killing will receive the serious attention of the police, the DPP or the Judiciary. Without being crass about it, if you are not a mover or a shaker, you might as well die of rinderpest infestation for all they care. But if you are a member of a class to which the rank and file in the national Police, the DPP' s office or the subordinate courts are not invited, levers will be pulled, and public promises will be made regarding your killing, but only if you are the right kind of mover or shaker, that is, you and the government of the day and the senior echelons of that government's civil service are on the  same page and of the same mind.

Mr Muchai was a Member of Parliament. he was murdered on Saturday 7 February. He had two police bodyguards and a driver with him when he was murdered. They were murdered too. Their deaths have received the kind of coverage that feels like an afterthought. Mr Muchai's murder, on the other hand, has prompted the President, the Deputy President, the senate Majority Leader, the Chairman of the Council of Governors, the National Assembly Majority Leader, the Secretary-general of the Central Organisation of Trade Unions, the acting Inspector-General of Police, the Director of Criminal Investigations, the leadership of obscure churches in Kiambu and Dagoretti, and the slain politician's young wife to speak out about the need for a swift investigation. Indeed the chairman of the parliamentary security committee wants the investigation conducted and concluded in three days or, he promises, there will be hell to pay.

Presumably the unravelling of Mr Muchai's murder will also unravel the murder of his "associates" if indeed it was Mr Muchai who was the target. His bodyguards were policemen, with young families. They were obviously not rich policemen: they didn't have cars of their own so Mr Muchai was dropping them off at their police station in town. So too, it seems, about Mr Muchai's driver. For their poverty they will forever remain in the realms of innocent bystanders unless, by some evil turn of events, it is one or all three who were the targets and not Mr Muchai.

The next steps are familiar. Big Men will visit Mr Muchai's widow, television crews in attendance, and offer their very public condolences. A very public autopsy, for which results will not be released, will be ordered. A funeral programme will be swiftly organised. His burial will be a showcase of political posturing and crocodile tears. The burial of the policemen and driver will be accomplished without fanfare or publicity. Within two weeks, when the trail runs cold and the perpetrator or perpetrators of the heinous crime get further and further from the long arm of the law, some celebrity will expose themselves in public or some other scandal will erupt, our attention will wander and Mr Muchai, his bodyguards and his drivers will slip from our minds, never to return. Like I said, very familiar.