Confused pensioner, murdered companion and a hat

A scruffy-looking old man just entered through the main door of the police station. He acted erratically and kept looking all around him like someone afraid of everything. While he limped towards the main reception desk he kept nervously playing with his bowler hat between his fingers. For about a quarter of an hour, he tried to get the attention of a constable and when it started looking like a lost battle he sat on a bench in a corner of the room defeated.

After another fifteen minutes, one of the constables noticed him and with a hand gesture called him to the desk. It took the pensioner a while to shuffle his feet to the constable's position which the copper used to shift a stack of paper from the top of the desk to some invisible space.

When the man finally leaned against the reception desk the constable changed his gear to “neutral”, which is a mental method known to every policeman in the whole universe and used by the said policeman to not to get pissed off by every idiot with a minor problem.

This method is based on listening to the other party only marginally while thinking about something completely else. But there is a sophisticated keyword filter in policeman brain that is different for every cop and it expands and changes with the copper's length of service, his experience and his surroundings. The fineness of the filter then shows the quality of the copper.

`My name is constable Marsh,` pointed the copper on his badge. `How can I help you today?` said Marsh with a tone of someone who says the line many times a day.

`I would like to report a murder,` replied the man nervously.

Constable’s filter activated and he switched from neutral to his full attention mode.

`A murder?` he asked. `And who was killed?`

`My companion,` answered the man.

`Tell me your name, please,` said constable Marsh while he fished out a pan and a blank form.

`Morris Brixton.`

`Age?`

`probably 82.`

This didn’t startle Marsh, because in SA districts personal data knowledge were as accurate as a solution to a quantum physics equation done by a dead donkey left on a sunlit street for the last week.*  So Marsh was used to answers like “Probably 40”, “Around 55” or “Something between 20 and 35” when he asked someone’s age.

`Name of the victim?`

`Evelyn.`

`Her age?`

`Around 15`

`Scene of the crime?`

Mr Brixton was silent for a bit while he counted something on his fingers.

`On Factory Street II in that narrow alley between numbers 32 and 34,` he answered after a while.

`OK, thank you for the information. Please go back to the bench and I will send it to our murder squad.` said constable Marsh while finishing his form. `Someone from them will be down shortly to start the inquiries and he will go through the whole thing with you.`

Footnotes:

*Even though dead donkey in the SA district wouldn’t last that long. People eat anything when they are really hungry