Three Phones

There are things you notice even when you're doing your level best not to, and Nigel Fitzgerald's rubbish bin, put out on the shared landing every Wednesday at seven sharp, turned out to be a source of such things in a quantity considerably beyond what I considered ethically acceptable for a man who'd sworn off going through other people's bins.

Technically, I should point out, I did not go through it. The bin was already open — the lid hadn't quite shut, which, you'll agree, can happen to any bin — and I, walking past on my way to work, simply, entirely by chance, noticed its contents lying right on top, requiring no physical effort on my part beyond basic observational awareness.

The contents consisted of three identical boxes for three identical cheap phones — the kind sold at station kiosks for twenty pounds, no frills, buttons instead of a touchscreen — purchased, judging by the receipts poking out of one box, on the same day, at the same shop, four minutes apart.

I photographed the boxes. I won't pretend I hesitated for even a second.

At work, I showed Poppy the photo while she finished an egg sandwich at her desk with the kind of focus people usually reserve for deciding the fate of nations, rather than choosing between crusty and soft bread.

"Why would a normal person need three identical burner phones?" I asked, pulling my chair up to her desk.

"Because he lost the previous two and decided to stock up," she said, not looking up from her sandwich.

"Bought on the same day, four minutes apart?"

"Because the kiosk had a 'three for the price of two' deal on, and he's frugal."

"Poppy."

"Dave, I'm googling this right now to prove there are a hundred sensible explanations," she said, already typing, and thirty seconds later, frowning slightly, added: "Fine, I admit it, the top three results for 'why do people need burner phones' are all about drug dealing, espionage, and affairs. Not one article mentions kiosk deals."

"Thank you."

"This isn't in your favour, Dave. It means either you're right about something bad, or you're right about something very bad, and suddenly the umbrella superhero is the least alarming option on the table."

We spent the next hour — not, I'll admit, the most productive use of company time, for which we're both technically paid by a firm specialising in digital logistics solutions — drawing up a list of possible explanations for three burner phones bought on the same day. The list ended up impressively long, and included, in descending order of likelihood according to Poppy and descending order of drama according to me: drug dealing, espionage for a foreign power, an affair (times three, which was, frankly, logistically rather ambitious), participation in underground no-rules fighting, insurance fraud (this one perked me up considerably, given Nigel's profession), and, right at the bottom, in deliberately small handwriting, "connected to superhero activity, for anonymous contact with informants, police, and the press" — the one entry I'd written and which Poppy promptly crossed out in red pen.

"Isn't that more logical than drug dealing?" I asked, looking at the crossed-out line.

"It's more logical," she admitted reluctantly. "But it sounds so ridiculous my brain refuses to accept it as a working theory, even when every fact points that way."

"That's the whole point of a good disguise," I said, with the solemnity that, I now realise, was probably irritating Poppy about as much as it would have irritated me in her position. "The truth is so absurd nobody believes it. Perfect cover."

"Or," Poppy said, finishing the last bite of her sandwich with the air of someone delivering a closing argument, "he's just dealing weed out of back alleys, and we're two grown adults discussing superheroes over lunch because we're both desperately short of adrenaline in our otherwise orderly office-clerk lives."

This was, I admit, a painfully accurate observation, and I chose not to respond to it directly.

That evening, back home, I caught myself standing at the kitchen window again, from which — if you stand in exactly the right spot and crane your neck slightly — you can just make out Nigel's windows below. The light was on. A shadow moved, once, then again, then vanished from view for a long while.

I got my phone out and, instead of adding another line to the cancellation table, wrote myself a note — a habit left over from university days, when I used to jot down essay ideas there and never read them again: "What if he's not a villain or a hero, just a man with a very strange hobby I'm better off not knowing about?"

I reread the note, sighed, and deleted it. Not because it wasn't true. But because, if I'm honest with myself for the third time this week, I was already far too interested to settle for 'better off not knowing.'

A fourth card went up on the board that evening — "3 PHONES, ONE DAY, RECEIPT ATTACHED" — pinned next to the photo of the boxes, printed out on the home printer as official Exhibit Three.

Exhibit Two, for the record — the blood on the cuff — already hung above it, circled in red marker, captioned in my own handwriting with a note that, reading it back, sounded openly alarming for a man still nominally employed in logistics: "need to find out more."

I went to bed late, and just before turning in I got that message from Nigel — the apology, the promise of a proper evening, the question of whether I'd been quiet lately — and, without quite thinking it through, replied with the laundry question, which had seemed innocent enough when I sent it, and read as almost embarrassingly transparent by the time I reread it the next morning.

I meant to send something to smooth it over — "joking, just ran out of washing powder, recommend a brand" or something along those lines — but I never got the chance: the next morning, over coffee, scrolling the local news out of pure ritual, because instant coffee tastes exactly the same as filter as far as I'm concerned, I came across a short item in the city section.

"Night incident in Shoreditch: a construction site on Hanbury Street was the scene of a scuffle. Witnesses report several men leaving the area with injuries of unclear origin. Police are investigating; no official statement has been made regarding the involvement of the local vigilante known as the Grey Umbrella."

Hanbury Street. I pulled up maps on my phone. Twelve minutes' walk from our building.

I set my coffee down, looked at the board, now taking up the entire cupboard-office wall, and felt that particular thrill — which, looking back, was a blend of genuine detective's unease and a thoroughly unhealthy excitement at the fact that my dull logistics-clerk life had suddenly acquired a plot.

I pinned the Hanbury Street clipping up next to the photo of the torn coat from the bin bag. The lines matched up perfectly — too perfectly to write off as coincidence, though that was exactly the word, "coincidence," I stubbornly kept using out loud with Poppy, because saying the other word — "evidence" — out loud would mean admitting that my life had officially stopped being boring, a turn I was not, if I'm honest, quite ready for yet.