The building was slowly taking shape. Dark concrete was being clad with wall lining, pipes and cable trays snickered across the ceiling. Climbing to the second floor he pushed open the door of the Portacabin. Noise, smoke and smell hit him in the face.

"Morning Sarah, and how are you this fine day," he leered across at a young girl who shook her carefully dyed pink bleached hair at him as she sat at a battered wooden desk, pushing paper into envelopes.

"OK Paul, and yurself?" her Glaswegian rasp destroying any illusion looking at her had given him. You did not get randy with a voice like that. Just imagine, 'what are you doing tonite then Jimmy'. 'Eh, me, nought why?' 'then get up the hospital and get this fixed.' Blood, gore, deprivation and bloody thick. Who were these people? Ah well, so it was not all bad, thought Paul as he laughed to himself. Hark at the pot calling the kettle black! Was he any better than any other loser? Not at all. He got pissed regularly and he couldn't go a day without the wacky-baccy. He took another quick look at Sarah. She might clean up nice.

This contract was coming to an end. It was a shell and core job, a block of offices in the city built by a property company who were now looking for tenants. Paul's team had installed all the basic services, plumbing, electrics, sewerage, air conditioning, fire protection and public lighting. They were never comfortable jobs as the building-services crew moved in as soon as the builders had put together the basic framework. In this case Paul had supervised the installation of all the main services to a restaurant that was planned for the top floor, ten storeys up. He'd also been told to install underfloor heating and ventilation. They'd been working away quite happily until the architect changed his mind. To be fair it wasn't the guy's fault. The developer had found a possible tenant who had raised just two objections. They wanted the catering area on the ground floor, and the air conditioning fitted in the ceilings.

As a result the developer's representative, a smartly dressed ex-public schoolboy, had haughtily addressed a contractors meeting with, "Don't want staff complaining about too much warm air blowing up their skirts. And we don't want a restaurant with a view. We'll never get them back to work in the afternoon, besides most of them are young girls, and they all seem to smoke, they'll want somewhere to chat and puff. Better they do that on the street. Canteen on ground floor, at the back, and get as much natural ventilation in as you can. This is no longer a fully air-conditioned job. I want the cheapest system we can get away with."

All that seemed reasonable unless you've just installed several hundred metres of 100 mm pipe vertically from bottom to top of the building, and had ordered ductwork to fit under the floor, and were now being asked to turn the whole building upside down.

"All this don't come cheap you know Frank," Paul had said to his boss. "Besides it hurts when you've done a good job, taken time and trouble to get it all looking nice and tidy and its all got to be ripped out."

"Don't worry my son. We'll have a good holiday out of this lot. Variations to contract my son. Make sure you log every minute, record every item used, and ignore or spirit away anything that looks like it can be used again, and all the time keep smiling. We'll be called the smiling assassins." He laughed loudly at his own joke as he waved goodbye.