Inspector John Rebus spends his last week in the criminal investigation department unraveling a whole tangle of mysterious incidents. Russian dissident poet Alexander Fedorov was killed on a sparsely populated Edinburgh street. Following this, the audio studio, the owner of which recorded the poet’s speeches, burns down. The owner himself dies in the fire. Rebus and his partner Siobhan Clarke come across both small drug dealers and drug-addicted girls, as well as representatives of the political and banking elite of Scotland. And then millionaire Sergei Andropov appears, persecuted in Russia for financial fraud. He is actively looking for contacts not only with local politicians and bankers, but also with an old acquaintance of Rebus - the bandit Cafferty. While Rebus is struggling with the puzzle, putting disparate facts into a single picture, someone is trying to “frame” him: Cafferty has been attacked, and all the evidence points to Rebus.