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shops: The bakers on the corner with their cases full of mouth-watering French fancies, cream buns, and meringues; the News Agent and Sweetshop where he’d buy Highland Toffee and Parma Violets for his father—to mask the smell of alcohol on his breath (so his mum wouldn’t give the old man any Shite about it); the Evening News offices where he and Kenny would go late on Saturday afternoons to pick up The Pink , a special edition listing all the football scores; and, of course, the model shop.
    He and Kenny used to save their pennies for weeks to buy an airplane kit, then spend hours and hours gluing the wee plastic bits together. Thinking back on it now, he could almost smell the glue. It was a wonder they didn’t both develop brain damage from all the fumes they’d inhaled.
    As Edinburg h faded, fear began to claw at his insides. He badly craved a cigarette, but couldn’t bring himself to let go of the Glock long enough to light one. The assassins could be anywhere, damn it. Watching. Waiting. Preparing to strike. 
    He trundled on, images from earlier flashing through his mind like machine-gun fire. Baghdad. Kelsey. Bodies. The gunman. He should have felt outraged, aggrieved, devastated, but he only felt like an empty biscuit tin. As per usual.
    “ In the gloaming, oh my darling, think not bitterly of me…”
    When his mobile started buzzing, he gave up singing and popped the device out of the holster on his belt. Squinting down at the wee screen, he checked the caller ID, but didn’t recognize the number. With considerable trepidation, he accepted the call.
    “So , did you mean what you said? Or, were you just handing me a line?”
    It was a female voice with a youthful cadence.
    “Who’s this?”
    “Who do you think?”
    He took a breath and spewed it in a white cloud of frosty vapor. He was so not in the mood to play guessing games.
    “G osh, I’m deeply flattered, Alex. Not .”
    His mind dialed up a coltish young woman with long blond hair and big blue eyes—the co-ed who’d tried to seduce him the night before.
    “Forgive me, Mackenzie,” he said. “It’s just that I’ve had a bit of a rough day.” 
    “No shit,” she said. “ I saw it on the news. Are you okay?”
    “That depends on your definition .”
    Mackenzie started prattling on about something meaningless. As he walked, half-listening, he scanned the parked cars lining both sides of the street for anything suspicious while scenes from the night before replayed inside his brain.
    After his speech, he’d hung around for a couple of hours talking to some of the student editors about the best way to break into journalism. He tried to be encouraging, despite his own creeping cynicism brought on by so many professional disappointments. In this age of profit-driven corporate media ownership, he knew what those new to the profession would be up against, knew that any idealistic young reporter who dreamed of making a difference was in for a rude awakening.
    He certainly had been.
    “My parents, my dad especially, are pitching a royal fit that I want to go into journalism,” Mackenzie told him. A small circle of her fellow student editors were gathered around them, mostly listening, but also putting their two cents in now and again. “I keep telling my dad, I’ll only do it for a couple of years and, if it doesn’t pan out, then I’ll go to law school…”
    “Journalism’s a dead end, Mack,” a gangly lad in spectacles put in. “Everybody knows that. Don’t waste your time.” He threw a guilty look at Buchanan. “No offense, dude. I mean, you look like you got into it a while ago. And, well, obviously you thought you were going to change the world, speak truth to power, and all that other noble Don Quixote bullshit. And then, well, along came the Internet and like, bam, you were totally hating life. But no worries, right? Coz you started the Voice . And now, maybe you’ll get lucky and someone’ll buy you out like they bought