Stopping only at a sandwich bar to grab a bacon roll, Gray drove to the offices of Viking Security Services and filled his parking space near the front door.  He had started this company a few months after leaving the Army and had been supplying security personnel to domestic and foreign companies for the last five years.  His main income came from supplying BGs, or Body Guards, to companies operating in regions affected by the recent upheaval in the Gulf States, although he also provided staff specialising in training private defence teams.  His first such contract was supplying advisors to a Saudi prince to train his personal guard and the job they had done had cemented his reputation.  Gray currently had a team of five permanent advisors, plus over one hundred other freelance staff on his books ready to take a job at a moment’s notice, half of whom were already in the field.  Each of them was earning Viking Security Services a commission of £100 a day.

All of the people he employed were either personally selected, having served with them, or came highly recommended by former colleagues still in the forces.  If a soldier cut the mustard in his old regiment, they would be pointed in Gray’s direction when they left.  His insistence on selecting only the best in their field made him the stand-out choice for close protection contracts.

He got out of his BMW cabriolet after putting the roof up to protect the interior from the seagulls which mobbed the area.  One of the local residents liked to feed these birds each morning, which meant at least thirty of them would be on the wing, screaming past his office window and shitting all over his car.  He wouldn’t have minded if they had been little sparrows or blue tits, but seagulls were nothing more than flying rats.  They nested on buildings, they ate garbage – often destroying the garbage bag and spreading its contents all over the street in the process – and they made such a racket whenever a rival ventured to within fifty yards of their territory.  Perhaps one day they would abandon the city and return to the sea, but as long as this ignorant cow kept inviting them for breakfast, Tom wasn’t going to hold his breath.

Inside the office building Tom stopped off at the kitchen to get a coffee to go with his sandwich.  He ate after mating the laptop with the docking station on his desk, and once it had powered up he went for a quick look at the BBC news website.  The intention was to get the World News section to check on developments in Syria, where he had a team of seven contractors, but before he could navigate to the page the main headline caught his eye:

“Anger at killer driver’s sentence”