Sardar Heights they put up in two thousand and sixteen where before there stood the glassworks of the Patel brothers, and here I always get confused, because the Patels of Valsad are many, and the ones from the glassworks were no relation to the ones who live today on the seventh floor, and no one from Manav's family ever came here to choose the materials, because Manav came only to deliver. I have been here since two thousand and three, when this corner of the road to Nani Daman was still red earth and in the evenings the carts came by to fill the drums at the glassworks — the clear glass was blown by hand and packed into wooden crates with straw, straw that I and two other boys used to come and beg as a gift for the henhouses at home. Now they make the glass elsewhere, and the Patels of the glassworks have gone, and the building they put up afterwards has thirteen floors.

The thirteen floors — and here I must be precise — are not all alike: the first five are the inner ones, in grey concrete, lived in by railway families; from the sixth up the smoked glass begins, the façade turns glossy, and up there go the doctors, the engineers, the Patels who are Patels again. The thirteenth is the last, and it has the gallery of tempered glass. At night, from my gatehouse, the thirteenth shows as a yellow line, because they keep the service lights burning even while they sleep.

Manav came five times, from the Monday to the Friday of last week, always after eleven at night, always with the helmet in his hand. You know the helmet by its red colour and by the word Domino's on the side. The four night deliveries permitted at the gate we write down: apartment, time, amount. But Manav was not coming to deliver at Sardar Heights, because his signature is not in the register. Manav came in by the side service door, the one that gives onto the service stairwell, and he climbed. On foot. I know because the lift records the calls at the panel, and on those five evenings the panel never lit up. To climb thirteen floors on foot at eleven at night, after a shift at Domino's from five in the afternoon, and before that — the owner Bhavesh told me last week at the stall — a morning shift at an ice company belonging to his wife's cousin, is a thing that is done for no reason I know of, save one: to look for the top floor. But then, I said to myself the first time, then he would climb and he would stay there.

And instead — this is what has stayed on me and what the police asked me this morning and what I chose not to say — on the Thursday night Manav climbed, he stood five minutes in front of the thirteenth floor, and then he went back down. You can see it on the gallery camera when someone passes. Five minutes exactly. I timed it with my Forerunner watch, which is Russian, Mr Mehta of the ninth gave it to me, it tells off the seconds with its tick. Five minutes, then down.

This morning, at five forty, I opened the courtyard gate and the helmet was two metres from the body. The body one sees less well. I stopped outside the circle and called the public security guard. Inspector Solanki came, I know him, he is from Atul, his wife has the mango stall at the market in Dharampur. He asked me: what did you see this week. He put the question sitting in the gatehouse, with the glass of lukewarm water that I had poured him myself.

I had a moment. A moment is a time that is not measured with the Forerunner. I thought: I can tell him the five minutes of the Thursday on the thirteenth, and then I shall be saying that I knew, and he will ask me why I did not speak — and I would not know how to answer. Or I can tell him only about the helmet this morning, about the side service door, about the lift that does not light up.

I told him only about the helmet. I said: this morning at five forty. I said: it was two metres away. He wrote it down. He drank. He thanked me. He went upstairs to see the thirteenth.

When he had gone, I took the rag with the Lysol and I washed the courtyard floor on the side opposite the circle, where nothing had happened. To wash the floor on the opposite side, while the photographers of the technical police are working the side where something did happen, is a trade of its own, and I mean that it is learned — I learned it from my predecessor, Mr Rajpal, who was here before me, when the glassworks was still standing, and who always told me: the floors washed on the side where nothing has happened are the ones people look at when they step out of the lift. It is I who decide what people see coming in, and what people see going out.

Now, while I talk with Bhavesh's nephew, who has the telephone and is recording for his uncle, the gate stands open. The residents of the seventh and the ninth are coming down to go to work. No one looks at the courtyard. Everyone looks at the clean floor on the opposite side.

The helmet they carried away two hours ago, with gloves. The family had not yet arrived. Manav's mother — I heard it from the cousin of the pizzeria owner, who came to speak with me — does not yet know about the loans. Her knowing was the reason Manav did not say. On the Thursday night on the thirteenth, five minutes, he had convinced himself. On the Friday night it was already another thing: he was someone waiting for the Sunday.