Tommy McCall

Tommy McCall is a prosperous businessman and the elder brother of Tony McCall, whose financial success gives him access to Edinburgh’s influential social circles. He helps fund a public anti-drugs campaign and is welcomed among the city’s wealthy, yet he is also connected to Hyde’s Club, a secretive establishment at the centre of the investigation. His encounters with John Rebus reveal both the polished confidence of a man accustomed to money and influence and the private disarray of a brother who repeatedly turns up drunk at Tony’s home.

Identity and Public Position

Tommy enters the story as a guest at a business luncheon attended by John Rebus, Superintendent Watson, Finlay Andrews and James Carew. Rebus recognizes his surname and asks whether he is Tony’s brother; Tommy confirms the connection. His transport company has become successful enough to run without his constant attention. Tony later describes how Tommy once worked around the clock, but now can take time away from the business, a change that suggests both substantial wealth and a life less governed by daily work.

His standing is visible in the company he keeps. At lunch, he is comfortable enough to interrupt the conversation and press Finlay Andrews about where Chinese gambling players keep their money. Superintendent Watson stops the question as unsuitable for the table, while Andrews responds with a hostile look. The exchange does not establish what Tommy knows about Andrews’s affairs, but it shows him bringing an uncomfortable subject into a respectable gathering—and doing so in front of the businessman whose reaction makes the question pointed.

Tommy is also among the businessmen supporting Superintendent Watson’s new anti-drugs campaign. The proposed campaign combines public-awareness work with funding for discreet information, and the group has pledged fifty thousand pounds. When Rebus later mentions the luncheon to Tony, Tony confirms that Tommy is paying toward the effort. That contribution places Tommy among the city’s public benefactors, even as the novel’s investigation connects his social world to a private club whose activities are far removed from the campaign’s declared purpose.

Business, Money and Finlay Andrews

Tommy’s wealth is not merely a marker of social status; it shapes his choices and his independence. His transport company is described as self-running, allowing him to take time off, and he speaks of selling it and retiring while still young. He imagines a future abroad, perhaps in Barbados or Spain, and a small villa. The plan is presented casually, as though a major business decision and a change of country are both within easy reach.

Finlay Andrews is interested in buying the company. Tommy tells Rebus and Superintendent Watson that a couple of his trucks failed to deliver on time, costing him two major contracts, and says he is drowning his sorrows. He then reveals Andrews’s interest in purchasing the business. The sequence places a concrete business setback beside the proposed sale, but Tommy does not say that the lost contracts are the reason he wants to sell. His disclosure instead makes the potential transaction another link between him and Andrews, whose wider business connections and role at Hyde’s are part of the investigation.

Tommy’s earlier encounter with Rebus at lunch gives this business news added context. He is not simply a donor encountered at a civic event: he can question Andrews in public, has a company Andrews wants, and later appears at the club associated with Andrews. These facts place him close to the powerful network Rebus is trying to understand. They do not, by themselves, establish that Tommy participates in the club’s criminal activity or knows the full extent of it.

The Brothers’ Uneasy Attachment

Tony’s account of Tommy complicates the impression of an assured businessman. As boys, the brothers were a disruptive pair, frightening their neighbours with pranks such as ringing doorbells and running away, lighting bonfires and putting a football through a window. Tony recalls their shared mischief with warmth, but says that he now rarely sees Tommy unless Tommy is drunk. The childhood closeness has not disappeared so much as narrowed into an irregular, difficult adult ritual.

One version of that ritual is Tommy arriving by taxi at Tony’s home, falling asleep in a chair, and waking the next morning unable to understand where he is. He has done this more than once. In the morning he has breakfast, gives Tony’s children some money and leaves; he does not telephone or visit between these episodes. The routine combines generosity with absence. Tommy’s money reaches the children, but the ordinary effort of keeping in touch with his brother remains missing.

On one such night, Rebus offers to take Tommy home. Tony refuses, explaining that Tommy is his brother and should stay in a chair for the night. Once Rebus leaves, Tony looks at Tommy, asleep, and quietly reproaches him. He then bows his head to hide his tears. Rebus sees that beneath Tony’s annoyance lies a grief sharpened by attachment: the brothers had once been inseparable, and their present distance cannot be treated as indifference. Tommy’s passivity in the scene is important too. He is not shown responding to Tony’s emotion; the moment reveals the relationship through Tony’s care and distress rather than through a reconciliation.

Hyde’s Club and the Investigation

Tommy’s connection to Hyde’s emerges through Tony’s reluctant disclosure to Rebus. Tony says that Tommy once took him there. He found the place appalling and did not stay, but fears that photographs may exist showing him there. The possibility frightens him enough to make him cautious about helping Rebus. Tommy’s role in taking his brother to the club is established; the evidence does not explain why he brought him, or what Tommy understood about the establishment at the time.

This history gives Tommy’s later appearance at the club particular weight. At around half past eight, he arrives while Rebus and Superintendent Watson are there. He has been drinking and takes a seat at their table. When a fight breaks out in the building, Tommy recognizes Tony among the apparent outsiders. His attention shifts immediately to his brother, and he joins the melee after Tony is struck. The scene shows the same sibling attachment that Tony’s account had made painful: whatever the years of neglect, Tommy reacts when Tony is in danger. His intervention is not a considered statement about the club or its business; it is a sudden, physical response to his brother’s presence in the fight.

Character and Narrative Significance

Tommy’s story is built from contrasts rather than a settled verdict. He is rich enough to contemplate selling a company, retiring abroad and supporting a campaign with a substantial donation; he is also a familiar, disruptive visitor in Tony’s home, where his drunkenness repeatedly leaves his brother to care for him. He moves easily among businessmen and has a connection to Hyde’s, but the novel does not disclose the full extent of his knowledge or involvement. Rebus’s investigation brings those separate parts of his life into the same frame without resolving them into a simple account of guilt.

His relationship with Tony provides the most intimate measure of that ambiguity. Tommy’s old role as a partner in childhood pranks has given way to a pattern in which he arrives, sleeps, accepts care and leaves. Yet when the brothers meet again amid the club’s violence, Tommy steps in for Tony. The gesture does not repair their estrangement, but it confirms that the bond survives beneath it. Through Tommy, the novel places public generosity, private neglect and sudden familial loyalty alongside one another, while leaving open how much the respectable business world around him depends on what its members prefer not to discuss.