But then fear took her, and she made to cross the threshold. It was raining outside, and she hesitated. ‘Hide.’ And with that he yanked open the door. Then he looked away again, into a distance all of his own. He stared at her, his eyes seeming almost to recognise her. ‘They’re coming,’ he repeated, his voice a whisper now. Only two minutes ago, the most important decision in her life had been whether or not to dare a trip to the squat’s seething lavatory. The sweat trickled from his chilled rat‘s-tails of hair. And she knew, too, that he had the makings upstairs in his bedroom. She’d seen him pretty strung out before, but never this bad. He had pushed her all the way to the front door now. She was at the top of the stairs, and he stumbled towards her, grabbing her by the arms, propelling her downstairs with unfocussed force, so that she feared they would both fall. He was shrieking now, frantic, his face drained of all colour. Rebus is able to arrest Hyde's owner and several high profile members, but to his outrage and disgust all the prisoners die suspicious deaths: the powers-that-be are covering it up to prevent scandal. It emerges that the dead man was a photographer who took and hid some sensitive photos in a specialist private members' club - Hyde's - where highly-connected people in society watch illegal boxing. As part of his investigation, Rebus finds the young woman named Tracy who knew the dead man and heard his terrifying last words: "Hide! Hide!" Rebus takes seriously a death which looks more like a murder every day, and he begins to investigate the true circumstances of the death. Some of his colleagues are inclined to categorise it as the routine death of a "junkie", but Rebus is perturbed by some unusual facts of the case: a full package of heroin in the dead man's room, and some mysterious bruises on his face and body. Detective Inspector John Rebus finds the body of an overdosed drug addict in an Edinburgh squat, laid out cross-like on the floor, between two burned-down candles, with a five-pointed star painted on the wall above.
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