Nathan Trentham – “Missing Wife”

Nathan Trentham – “Missing Wife” (London, UK, 1987)

Nathan Trentham, a sharp-eyed former Scotland Yard inspector in his mid-40s, had traded the Yard’s bureaucracy for private work after a messy internal affairs inquiry cleared him but left scars. Born in a working-class corner of Manchester, he’d moved to London in the late 70s, still carrying the dry northern wit and a distrust of authority. He operated from a small office above a curry house in Soho, chain-smoking Silk Cuts and listening to Radio 4 while nursing a perpetual hangover from cheap Scotch.

The case walked in on a drizzly October afternoon. Eleanor Hargrove, elegant in a camel coat that smelled of money and rain, placed a silver-framed photo on his desk. Her husband, Richard, a merchant banker with Barclays, had vanished three days earlier. No note, no luggage missing, his Jaguar still in the garage of their Kensington townhouse. The police called it a “mid-life wobble.” Eleanor wasn’t convinced.

Nathan started at the usual places: Richard’s club in St James’s, the pub near his office, and the mistress he quickly uncovered in a Maida Vale flat. The mistress swore Richard had been planning to leave Eleanor but had grown terrified in the weeks before disappearing. “He said something about the Germans and old files,” she whispered.

Digging deeper, Nathan found Richard had been quietly helping a former East German defector launder money from a 1960s defection gone wrong. The money trail led to a safety deposit box in Holborn containing photographs of British officials from the 70s. On the fourth day, Nathan received a Polaroid in the post: Richard, bruised, holding a copy of that day’s Times.

The climax came in the foggy pre-dawn on the docks at Tilbury. Nathan, revolver in his raincoat pocket, confronted the ex-Stasi handler who had grabbed Richard to silence him. A tense standoff ended with Nathan’s bluff about having already copied the files to a journalist friend. The handler released Richard, who stumbled into Nathan’s arms, sobbing.

Eleanor paid the bill promptly. Nathan lit another Silk Cut, watching the sunrise over the Thames, wondering how many more ghosts from the Cold War would wash up on British shores before the decade was out.