Creative sleep deprivation

About two years ago, I was woken up at about 3am every morning by the phone ringing. The caller, evidently ringing from far away, did not speak English. I did not speak their language (I'm tempted to identify as "Stupid", but that would be mean. Then again, so was waking me up at 3am every bloody night). Nonetheless, they called, regularly, in a futile attempt to get through to whatever faraway loved one they believed should have been at my number. Presumably, the call was important enough, and the callee loved enough, that the intended recipient would not have minded being woken up at 3am. Not as much as I did, anyway. Every night. Repeatedly.

I would tell the misguided caller, futilely, that they had the wrong number; knowing they did not understand me, but hoping they would at least realise that I did not speak their language, nor know anyone at this number who did. I would hang up. They would call back. I would hang up, and unplug the phone. Silence might ensue for, say, half an hour. Then they would call back. I (or Beloved; he was not on the phone side of the bed, but was sometimes kickable into action at this point) would stumble out of bed, out of the room, into the lounge, and hunt in the dark, behind the desk, for the plug to the second phone. We could then sleep again.

We learnt to unplug both phones before going to bed. This continued for at least a month. My theory at the time was that this might be part of a cunning demoralisation campaign being launched from the Middle East: hey, you wanna bomb us? We will keep you awake. So there. See how you like conquering the world on insufficient sleep. Ha! If only I could have explained that they were targeting the wrong people; that I would gladly have passed their "Iraq called; please don't bomb" message onto the Powers That Be, but they weren't taking my calls. Or those of the other million people on that march. Ahem. Never mind.

So, that was then, and that was tiresome, and peculiar. However, in the inexplicability stakes, it pales into comparison beside last night's 3am wake-up call. Which wasn't a call at all.

It was a jackhammer.

In a quiet sidestreet, at 3am, someone was running a bloody jackhammer, drilling up the tarmac.

I stumbled out of bed in an effort to see what was going on, and perhaps vent my feelings in a choice manner, but was foiled in my attempt to shed all dignity by the three cubic metres of boxes between me and the window. Luckily, I could hear someone else yelling on my behalf. But all I could do was crawl back to bed and pull the pillow over my head.

Only two possible explanations present themselves.

One: a very stupid benefit fraudster was doing a bit of manual labour on the quiet (not realising that the extreme and unlikely volume of noise produced would render this rather less than ideally quiet). Probability: extremely slender. I doubt anyone other than the council would be paying anyone to dig up the street, and I can't imagine anyone having the balls to defraud the council by working for the council.

Two: a very stupid murderer was trying to hide the body. Probability: also slender. In this neighbourhood, even the very stupid would have to realise that a better option would be to leave the corpse lying around with a strategically suspicious needle.

So I'm stumped. Any ideas?