atie sat at the funeral and took copious notes that she would somehow fit into a story that people would read one minute and forget the next. Walking back from the gravesite she exchanged a few pleasantries with people she didn’t know. Her reputation had suffered such shipwreck that no one there recognized her other than one old codger from the Times who shot her a condescending smile. He was eighty-four. He should be covering the death page, she felt; it was a great way for him to check up on his contemporaries. Yet it was also very plainly true that he was here because he wanted to be. Katie was here because she had nowhere else to go.

Back in her hotel room she typed up her piece. The official bio of the departed Scot had long since been archived, as were those of all persons with even a remote connection to celebrity. Her story was simply to add atmosphere, her take on the proceedings. Yet there were only a few ways to describe the event of someone’s passing. People are sad; people cry. People go home and keep on living; the departed, out of necessity, stays behind.

Andrew MacDougal had enjoyed a long career in European politics but had been “retired” for over thirty years and thus he’d long since faded from the public eye. The whole story would encompass fewer than five hundred words and it would only be that long because the president of Katie’s newspaper was Scottish. If there was a picture attached to the story, it would no doubt show the dead man in this prime kilting years.

She shook her head at the thought of it. A nearly seven-hour flight to London and a ratty connector to Glasgow, with the same on the way back. All that for a man who’d ended his political career when Katie was still a child. And all while the news story of the millennium was playing out right before her eyes.

She of course had been following closely the events of Konstantin and all the rest. She had even sent carefully worded e-mails to her editor suggesting that perhaps since she was over this way anyway, a trip to Moscow might be worthwhile. She took it as a bad sign that he never bothered to respond.

I write about dead people while the story that could resurrect my career rolls on. Lucky, lucky me.

After she e-mailed her obit masterpiece off, Katie had the rest of the day free. Hell, she might even extend her stay. It wasn’t like she had anything to go back to. She could venture to the ancient city of Edinburgh, which was just a short hop to the east. Glasgow was Scotland’s largest city and not particularly inviting ground for a recovering alcoholic since it was filled with enticing pubs and clubs. By comparison, the capital of Edinburgh was a bit more sedate. And who knew, another hundred-year-old Scotsman worthy of obit page status might drop dead while she was here. She could bag two prone Scots with one roll of parchment. If she were lucky she might even get a bonus.

Katie made a wide detour around the hotel bar and hit the streets.

She’d never really spent much time in Scotland. Ireland was where all the news was, at least when the IRA was active. Very early in her career she’d once been caught in a crossfire in Belfast that had gone on for half a day. She’d phoned in the story while squatting behind a rusted Fiat and dodging bullets. After it was over, she’d made the bar rounds, and then taken a bath back at her hotel. It was only then that she’d found the flattened bullet stuck in her hair. It must have ricocheted off something. She’d kept that slug all these years; it was her lucky piece. Yes, she kept it, wore it around her neck in fact, despite it obviously having stopped working a long, long time ago.

She dropped by a café to eat. When the Earl Grey and blueberry scones came, she barely touched them. She paid her bill and left, her disinterested expression lingering behind somehow as though her weariness had the power to create solid mass from the shitty circumstances of her life.

She didn’t like being depressed, or one binge away from destroying her life again, perhaps for good. She knew she had to take steps to turn herself around, and that included more than leaving the bottle alone. The alcohol was capable of crushing her, certainly. Yet Katie knew her real demons lay within, much of it emanating from the death of an innocent little boy. It was a guilty secret of devastating degree.

And every minute she could feel those demons trying to take her over. She walked down the crowded street in Glasgow feeling more alone than ever.