Tracy reports Ronnie McGrath’s death to John Rebus in a scene that converts an uncertain telephone tip into a disturbing witness account—and gives Rebus grounds to investigate the death as a possible murder. Her fear, the discrepancies she has to clarify, and her eventual willingness to make a statement shape the first steps of the inquiry.

The call and its disclosure

John Rebus is studying paperwork at his desk when the telephone rings. The caller says she has been told he is the person to speak to, but speaks with suspicion and hesitates over her identity. When she gives her name as Tracy, the disclosure seems to frighten her; she quickly retreats from it, then says she is calling about the squat in Pilmuir where a body was found. Rebus recognizes the reference and asks whether she made the original call reporting a death. Tracy confirms that she did, identifying the deceased as Ronnie McGrath.

Her account changes the significance of that earlier report. Rebus asks whether Ronnie was his real name, and Tracy says she does not know; in her experience, hardly anyone in their circumstances uses a real name. Rebus invites her to speak face to face and reassures her that she is not in trouble. Tracy rejects that reassurance: she called, she explains, because Ronnie told her he had been murdered. The claim is not proof of who killed him, but it immediately changes the call from a routine witness contact into a warning that the death may have been anticipated.

Tracy also says Ronnie told her repeatedly to hide. She is crying, and Rebus imagines a frightened young woman speaking from a distant callbox. He offers to collect her by car, but she refuses to give him her location at first. Her fear makes the practical problem plain: Rebus needs her testimony, while she is reluctant to make herself easier to find.

The body and the uncertain sequence

Asked where she found Ronnie, Tracy initially places him on the floor by a window. She describes him curled into a ball and says she thought he was asleep until she touched his arm and found him cold. She went looking for Charlie, but he had gone; left without him and panicking, she did not know what to do. These details establish what Tracy says she saw and the immediate confusion after the discovery, without resolving how Ronnie died or why Charlie was absent.

Rebus checks the setting and the position of the body rather than accepting the first description as complete. Tracy then clarifies that Ronnie was upstairs in his bedroom, not in the living room. The correction matters because Rebus is trying to reconcile her account with the body’s placement and bruises. He considers whether Ronnie might have been injured but still alive when Tracy fled, then crawled downstairs. That is Rebus’s tentative reconstruction, not something Tracy reports witnessing; the candles and the way the body had been positioned remain troubling details for him.

Tracy places her discovery late the previous night but cannot give an exact time. She says she panicked, and after calming down called the police at about seven in the morning. The interval between finding Ronnie and making the call helps explain the delay without establishing more than Tracy remembers: a late-night discovery, an initial panic, and a morning report.

From hiding to a face-to-face meeting

When Rebus asks Tracy to speak to other people, she wants to know why. He promises to explain when he picks her up and asks where she is. She eventually says she is back in Pilmuir, living in another squat, and Rebus suggests meeting near Shore Road rather than going directly to her new address. The exchange advances the investigation, but it also preserves the distance Tracy is trying to keep between herself and the police: she offers enough information to arrange a meeting, not an unguarded account of where she can be found.

In person, Rebus asks for a statement so the account will be formally recorded and the police can act on Ronnie’s death. Tracy remains suspicious of the request and asks what it is for. She takes a long time before nodding. Rebus touches her shoulder gently and thanks her. The moment marks a limited but important shift: she has not stopped being frightened, yet she agrees to put what she knows on record.

Investigative consequences

The meeting also brings up Ronnie’s camera. Tracy says it cost him a small fortune, paid for from the money he had saved out of social security. Rebus is sure there was no camera in Ronnie’s bedroom, so he adds robbery to the possibilities he is considering. The detail gives the death a material dimension: alongside the alarming account of Ronnie’s warning and the unusual positioning of his body, a missing possession may point to a motive or another line of inquiry.

Tracy’s report therefore supplies both a potential warning and a set of unresolved particulars. Ronnie allegedly foresaw murder and urged her to hide; she found him cold, curled up in his upstairs bedroom, after Charlie had disappeared; she contacted police only the following morning; and his expensive camera was missing. Rebus does not yet have a settled explanation. What the encounter establishes is why he cannot treat the death as a simple report: Tracy’s testimony gives him reasons to question the apparent circumstances and a reluctant witness whose account he must preserve carefully.