Michael Ramsay

In the novel The Clocks, Michael Ramsay and his wife live at 62 Wilbraham Crescent with their two sons Bill and Ted. He is seldom at home. His wife says he is a construction engineer and often goes abroad for his various projects. At the time of the events in the book, she believes he is in Sweden.

Because of his frequent travel, the espionage agent Colin Lamb asked for Ramsay to be vetted by his department. The vetting revealed that Mr Ramsay is not all he seems. He had taken on some curious assignments. He worked with genuine firms but these firms did not have much back history and what history they had were rather peculiar. Colonel Beck, who briefed Lamb, did not elaborate. But certainly, Ramsay went off at short notice some five weeks before the events in the book and was in Rumania--not Sweden his wife thought he had gone.

At the end of the book, surmised that Ramsay had defected to behind the Iron Curtain and that previously he had functioned as a courier for microfilms in the Larkin spy network. His wife knew that he had defected. He had asked her to join him but she declined because she wanted something better for her children.