John Rebus’s discovery of the Hyde entries in James Carew’s diary gives him the first tangible link between James Carew and Ronnie McGrath beyond their brief business encounter on Calton Hill. The clue is small—a name and a pattern of appointments—but its recurrence makes the apparent coincidence difficult to dismiss and redirects Rebus’s attention toward a concealed connection.

The search for evidence

The discovery comes as John Rebus considers whether James Carew’s death might have involved blackmail. Carew’s homosexuality had been forced into secrecy by the social climate surrounding AIDS, Rebus reasons, and that secrecy could have made him vulnerable to shame and coercion. A suicide, he knows, could be the endpoint of blackmail when its victim sees no way out. He therefore searches Carew’s apartment for something that might support or disprove his suspicion, hoping for a letter, a note, or any other evidence that would show his concern is not merely paranoia.

The search leads him to a locked drawer in the living room. Its keys are still in Carew’s trousers: he died in his pyjamas, and his other clothes remained in the apartment after the body was taken away. The detail makes the search possible, but the object Rebus retrieves is not an obvious confession or record of business. It is a leather-bound desk diary, taken from an antique writing desk whose small surface makes the former working furniture seem more like an ornament in a wealthy man’s home.

A private record

At first, the diary seems a poor reward. Its large, one-page-per-day format suggests room for a substantial account, but most pages are blank apart from a faint pencil line or two. Rebus had expected the private diary to offer something different from the presumably fuller appointment book at Carew’s office. The contrast matters: this is not a dense professional schedule but a sparse personal record, and the few names it preserves invite interpretation precisely because so little else is written down.

The entries include appointments with Jerry at four in the afternoon, Lindsay at six-thirty, and Marks at eleven in the morning. The names do not identify their owners securely. Marks might refer to two people, one person with that surname, or even the department store; Jerry and Lindsay could each be either a man’s or a woman’s name. Without a telephone number or a location, Rebus cannot tell who these people are or what the meetings concern. Their ambiguity establishes how little the diary can prove on its own, even as it encourages him to keep turning the pages.

The Hyde entries

One entry makes him look twice: Hyde, at ten at night. The name catches against two earlier pieces of information. On the night Ronnie McGrath died, Ronnie had said something to Tracy that Rebus understood as a warning about someone after him; the word could have been Hide. James Carew, too, had supplied the name, and Rebus now distinguishes the spelling: not Hide, but H-y-d-e. The diary turns that verbal resemblance into a concrete point of contact. It does not explain who Hyde is, but it places the name in Carew’s own private record.

Rebus’s excitement is proportionate to the limits of the find. The appointment provides a connection between Ronnie McGrath and James Carew, not an account of what passed between them or proof that Hyde is the person behind Ronnie’s warning. It is, as Rebus recognizes, a potentially tenuous lead. Yet it is more than the fleeting business transaction on Calton Hill that had previously brought the two men into the same frame: now the same distinctive name appears in both strands of the inquiry.

Pattern and consequence

When Rebus checks the other pages, he finds three more mentions of Hyde. Together with the first, they make four appointments over six months. All are late in the evening, at times when Calton Hill is beginning its trade, and each falls on a Friday. The dates are not identical in the monthly cycle: some are on the second Friday, others on the third. Repetition gives the otherwise bare name weight, while the consistent hour and weekday suggest a regular arrangement without revealing its participants or purpose.

Tony McCall leans over Rebus’s shoulder and asks whether he has found anything. Rebus initially answers yes, then retreats to saying that the diary is old and its owner was not much of a writer. His deflation is tactical or cautious in the moment; the entries have plainly mattered to him, and he has already recognized their connection to Ronnie McGrath. The scene ends without an identification of Hyde or an explanation of the meetings. Its consequence is instead a new investigative pattern: four recurring Friday-night appointments that give Rebus a reason to pursue the link between James Carew, Ronnie McGrath, and the name Hyde.