The dental records would take until morning.
Nair had made the call — Rohini Sharma's dentist on Sarjapur Road, the records request, the comparison process that would give them either confirmation or contradiction of the thing neither of them was ready to say out loud yet. It would take until morning. In the meantime: the apartment, and what it contained, and the specific work of a night spent among the objects of someone's memory palace, looking for the key that unlocked the right door.
She was alone for the first time. Nair had left at seven PM — the inspector had to attend to the rest of the investigation, the Layla Menon search, the warrant for the phone records, the post-mortem results which were expected the next morning. She had been told not to leave the apartment without informing the liaison officer, who was in the lobby. She had the phone with the single number. She had the eight notebooks and the apartment and the evening.
