Chapter 16 Day Six, Sunday

One of the few fun things Jack Burns had was sleeping in on Sunday mornings.That day, he couldn't sleep late.The phone rang at fifteen past seven.It was the Sergeant on Duty at Dover Gaol. "A man who was walking his dog early in the morning just came in," the sheriff said. Burns was bleary-eyed, not fully awake yet, and he hated the sheriff to death. "He was carrying a purse," the sheriff went on to report, "that he said his dog had found on the heath, about half a mile from the dwelling." Burns quickly sobered up. "A cheap, black plastic wallet?"

"Have you seen it?" "Keep him. Don't let him go. I'll be there in twenty minutes." The dog was being walked by a retiree, Mr. Robert Whitaker, who was sitting immaculately dressed in a drawing room with a cup of tea in his hand. Mr. Whittaker made a statement, signed it, and left.Burns called the police search advisory team and asked the grumpy team leader to conduct a thorough search of the half-acre wasteland.He asked to see the search report by sunset.It hadn't rained in four days, but the sky was overcast and gray; he didn't want the contents of his wallet to get wet.

Finally, he checked the wallet carefully.A few shallow marks from the dog's bite and a trail of spittle can be seen.But what's in it?He picked up the wallet with tweezers, put it in a plastic evidence bag, and called a fingerprint technologist.Yes, I know it's Sunday, he said repeatedly, but it's urgent. On this day, the search team filled eight garbage bags with the rubbish picked up from the wasteland and the haystack beside Mandela Road.They examined these items and worked till night. But none of these items came from that purse.The purse, as Mr. Whitaker testified, and Burns confirmed, was empty.