An autistic detective has managed to completely lose track of the crime she’s supposed to be solving after noticing that she and the victim apparently shared a special interest, it has been revealed.

Sarah Harrow, 44, who is usually described as “a completely fixed cannon who always plays by the rules”, found herself unable to focus on the grisly murder scene after inadvertently detecting evidence of the victim’s extensive collection of Sega Megadrive games and related memorabilia.

“It was like watching a switch being flipped,” Harrow’s colleague Becky Armitage, 40, said. “One minute she was scouring the room for evidence, the next she was grabbing me by the shoulder and excitedly telling me about a boxed copy of Tetris she had found. Tetris! I know detective work is about making pieces fit together, but obviously not like that!”

“It was particularly egregious when she sat down to play Zero the Kamikaze Squirrel, both contaminating the crime scene and inadvertently sitting on the victim, but when I pulled her up on it, she didn’t seem to hear me at all – she just looked straight past me at a problematic rodent with her eyes glazed over like a toddler watching Bluey while Forensics dusted around her for prints.”

Murderer Dexter Livingstone, 55, explained: “Sure, it’s a bit expensive finding a mint copy of Snatcher for the MegaCD, but there’s no better way to throw the fuzz off the scent. It wasn’t me though. Don’t print this.”

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