In this novel, Rebus, retired since 2007, DI Siobhan Clarke, and DCI Malcolm Fox all pursue their own investigations, though the cases come together around a policeman named Francis Haggard, stationed at Tynecastle in Edinburgh.
Fox also represents other interests of Gartcosh, the administrative campus of Police Scotland, including possible links with smuggling of cars for Fleck's dealership and of drugs.
This turns out to be a careful ploy to get Rebus to stir up trouble for the Mackenzie family: Fraser and Beth (an old flame of Cafferty's) and their daughter Gaby, who owns a nightclub.
Clarke and Fox, along with the rest of the MIT, gradually trace Haggard's last day, using phone records, CCTV footage, and file boxes full of old investigations of the Tynecastle police station.
[4] This is not the first novel where Rebus has an opportunity to think with regret about situations where he made mistakes; he recalls difficult past cases in Black and Blue (1997), Resurrection Men (2002), and Saints of the Shadow Bible (2013).
As in those novels, Rebus both fears exposure of past misdeeds and examines his own motives at the time, trying to ascertain whether, in breaking the rules, he also crossed the moral lines he had drawn for himself.
She is dismayed and skeptical when Francis Haggard claims that his wife-beating was a result of PTSD, caused by his years as a policeman and his participation in the culture of corruption—bullying, violence, and misogyny—at Tynecastle station.