Quiller Bamboo

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It was 1:59 a.m., when the telephone woke me and I rolled over and answered it and Tilson said they wanted me there right away and I told him no, it was too soon.

The line went silent and then Tilson came back on again — I suppose he'd turned away to talk to someone.

'Fully urgent,' he said.

The raw chill of a November fog came drifting through the open window, and I could hear a taxi throttling up along Knightsbridge in the distance.

'I've only been back ten days,' I said.

Tilson's not often starchy but he said, 'I think you know what fully urgent means,' and rang off, so I got up and spent five minutes in the bathroom and went down to the car with my teeth clean but the stubble still there and brought the Aston up to a steady fifty along Piccadilly and went through the red when there was nothing coming and picked up a panda near the Ritz: he closed in and got his lights flashing but I didn't take any notice and he dropped back as he got the call from the dispatcher — Tilson had covered me as I knew he would, because 'fully urgent' means that everyone's got to move.

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