Job by job, he figured out when to scrape or sand, soak or fog, preserve or dispose. He started Ben Giles Cleaning with a few mates in the late 1990s. “And within an hour of the call it was done,” said Baxter, as he sat with Giles outside a bar in Paddington station. I suggested that one day they might look back on the Dominion theatre job as Shit Play, but Giles and Baxter weren’t listening. Photograph: Mr Doomits/AlamyWhen Giles’s Cardigan restaurant was robbed last year, police gathered evidence by covering the place in a powdered black substance called amido that stops liquid moving.