The police wouldn’t release their names, for fear that criminals might be too interested in meeting them; so let’s call them Mrs Brown and Bill Brown.
Mrs Brown, an elderly lady, lives in a small house somewhere in the West of England, which she shares whith her grown-up son Bill. There’s nothing extraordinary about that, of course, but Mrs Brown and Bill are rather an odd couple. They are very suspicious of other people, and in particular, they are suspicious of banks; or at least they used to be.
For some reason best known to themselves, Mrs Brown and Bill mistrusted banks, and refused to put their money in a bank. Instead, they believed it was safer kept at home, or else carried round with them in cash. Of course, they never told anyone about this, because they knew wahat would happen if people knew they were walking round with thousands of pounds in their pounds in their pockets and bags.
Now one day in late summer, Mrs Brown and Bill went shopping in Taunton, a town not far from their home. They drove in as usual in their old Datsun car, and parked it in a free car park several hundred yards from the shops. They preferred the free open-air car park to the car park in town, because you have to pay to park in the car park near the shops.
They locked up their car, leaving nothing in it except a couple of old leather bags down on the floor, behind the driver’s seat.
Alas, when they returned from their shopping, they froze in horror at what they saw. During their absence, someone had broken into their car, and taken the bags. The thiefs, no doubt, had hoped that they contained the shopping.
Unfortunately for Mrs Brown and Bill, they didn’t contain the shopping… but twenty nine thousand pound in used banknotes. All their savings.
Poor Mrs Brown and Bill. When they went to the police station to report what had happened, the policemen almost laughed at their stupidity.
The police found three thousand pounds in a bag that the thief had dropped by mistake; but