Rebus’s discovery of Hyde’s is the turning point in his investigation: by slipping through a concealed entrance beneath Finlay’s Club, he finds a private fighting venue and recognizes that Ronnie McGrath’s death belongs to a wider system of exploitation and concealment. The discovery overturns Rebus’s earlier fixation on occult clues. What first looks like a sinister ritual scene proves to be one misleading fragment of a much larger criminal operation.

The disturbance at Finlay’s Club

The discovery begins during an evening at Finlay’s Club, where Rebus is alert to the risks posed by the presence of Superintendent Watson and Tommy McCall. At eight fifty, a commotion breaks out in the entrance hall. Several men in business suits, drunk and insistent, claim that someone called Philip had told them they could enter. Their excuses and the staff’s resistance draw the club’s attention away from its normal business and toward the hall.

Neil McGrath strikes one of the men, and the incident becomes a broader fight. Tommy recognizes his brother Tony among the apparent outsiders; distracted by the recognition, Tony is struck, and Tommy joins the confrontation. Neil and Harry Todd, both constables, are also caught up in the melee. Superintendent Watson’s presence briefly causes them to freeze, but the violence continues. The disorder gives Rebus an opportunity to move through the crowd toward the back of the building without attracting the same attention.

Detective Constable Brian Holmes is among the fighters, but Rebus notices that he is holding back and watching the rear of the hall. Holmes does not acknowledge Rebus. Rebus nevertheless proceeds with his own plan: to make himself appear injured and use the disturbance to get through the door to the club’s extension. His feigned injury is a practical diversion, not evidence that he has been attacked by the crowd. When a man opens the door, Rebus persuades him to come out, then enters behind him and bolts the door, intending to prevent anyone from following or leaving by that route.

The hidden room and what it reveals

Beyond the door, Rebus descends a narrow, unfinished-looking concrete staircase. He counts twenty steps before reaching a solid, utilitarian door and opening it into darkness. Once the lights come on, the space resolves into a large room with a small boxing ring in its centre and rows of stiff-backed chairs around it. The room is not an ordinary extension of the club: its concealed access and stripped-down arrangement identify it as a venue for private fights.

Rebus connects the room to rumours Calum McCallum had shared about a secret club within a club where wealthy patrons could place unusual bets. In Rebus’s understanding, the fights involved two drug-dependent young men paid in money and drugs to fight and keep quiet afterwards. The room’s existence gives a physical setting to the rumours: this is not merely talk about the appetites of rich visitors but a purpose-built space for clandestine entertainment.

The name Hyde’s links the venue to Edward Hyde, Robert Louis Stevenson’s embodiment of a dark side of human nature, and to Deacon Brodie, the Edinburgh businessman who was also a robber. Rebus reads the name as a deliberate emblem of respectable public identity concealing a criminal underside. The concealed stairs make that division architectural: the visible club above and the hidden arena below belong to the same establishment, but serve sharply different worlds.

The room also changes how Rebus understands Ronnie’s photographs and death. He considers whether Ronnie had been secretly photographing influential visitors or had come to the venue as a fighter while carrying a concealed camera. He cannot settle that question, and judges the distinction less important than the danger posed by the photographs. In Rebus’s reconstruction, Finlay Andrews learned that Ronnie had kept some images as insurance, although the photographs were of little use as blackmail or evidence. Andrews nevertheless believed they existed and acted to eliminate Ronnie.

Rebus revises the case

The discovery forces Rebus to separate the actual criminal operation from the occult pattern he had assembled around Ronnie’s body. He now understands the apparent staging as a deliberate attempt to make the death resemble a simple overdose: Ronnie was deprived of his usual drug, given rat poison, and left with heroin nearby. His body was moved downstairs and placed in candlelight. The people responsible, in Rebus’s account, had not intended the placement to form a meaningful ritual, and had failed to notice the pentagram on the wall in the dim light.

That recognition is a reversal in the investigation. Rebus admits to himself that he had read too much into the scene, mistaking coincidence for a coherent occult plot. The error has blurred his view of the real conspiracy, which is larger than the symbolic clues he had been following. The ring, chairs and hidden rooms offer a more concrete explanation of the setting: the secret is not a supernatural or ritual power, but a commercial operation that uses vulnerable people and protects its wealthy clientele.

Rebus calls out Finlay Andrews and climbs into the ring. He understands that the arena is only part of the premises: there are also guest bedrooms and locked rooms for private encounters. Drawing on James Carew’s diary, he connects the operation to gatherings held on the third Friday of the month and to young men brought back from Calton Hill to serve the clients. He concludes that Ronnie may have photographed what took place. The diary, the venue and Ronnie’s suspected insurance photographs now converge into a single explanation for Andrews’s fear of the images and Ronnie’s death.

Confrontation and immediate outcome

Rebus moves through the back rooms and confronts Andrews, who is separated from him by a mirror. Rebus breaks through it, pulls Andrews into reach, and knocks him unconscious. The confrontation gives the investigation a physical target: Andrews is no longer only the name Rebus has called into the hidden room, but a participant whom he has found there and subdued.

Malcolm Lanyon then appears with two men. Rebus sees Tracy in the ring, profoundly impaired by heroin and barely responsive when he holds her. Yet she shows a small sign of awareness. Lanyon acknowledges that he expected Andrews to handle Rebus but had doubted that Andrews could do so. One of Lanyon’s men goes to check on Andrews, leaving Rebus and Lanyon facing one another while Tracy remains with Rebus.

When the attention of the men shifts, Tracy strikes Lanyon and then collapses from the effort. Rebus seizes Lanyon and restrains him; the two other men approach, hesitate, and then flee toward the stairs. Rebus releases Lanyon, who falls, and marks the end of the struggle by counting to ten as if he were a referee. The action echoes the ring’s rules only in form: the private arena’s staged violence has become a direct contest, and its operators have lost control of the room.

Upstairs, the disturbance has quieted. Holmes, Tommy McCall, Neil McGrath and Harry Todd have been seen off; the staff are recovering, while Paulette offers drinks to restore the club’s atmosphere. When Rebus comes back through the door of Hyde’s, Paulette briefly freezes before resuming her role as hostess, though her warmth has changed. Superintendent Watson is still present and asks where Rebus had disappeared to. The immediate discovery and confrontation have exposed the hidden venue, but this scene does not establish a wider public reckoning or the final disposition of those involved.