Chapter 7

Meeting each month the Mantel building’s body corporate held their committee meeting in a small conference room on the ground floor. Being the first time anyone had heard of a death in the building most of the members were keen to progress quickly to the end of the meeting, were traditionally other business was discussed. However for some reason the other members couldn’t fathom the secretary was slowing down proceedings. Every time a minor point was raised the secretary asked a number of questions and pleaded with his colleagues to reiterate this point or that.

Finally with only five minutes remaining, and much to the relief of the majority of members, they moved onto other business.  The chairman of the committee started ‘as well as the unfortunate death in the building we’ve had reports of at least three other people that have fallen severely sick in the last week.’

‘That’s not unusual for a building this size’ noted the secretary.

‘Perhaps not, but we've also had a number of complaints about cold like symptoms while in the building. A couple of reports mention that the aircon’ maybe exasperating the problem and that the symptoms are worse while in the building.’

‘Hmm, sounds like some people just want an excuse to have some sick days.’

‘Maybe you're right, but it might be worth having someone checkout the air conditioning.’

Even though the room was cold, sweat started running down the secretary’s neck. Thinking anxiously he needed to stop this from going any further but didn’t want to be too obvious. He sighed under his breath as the treasurer piped up. ‘The building services manager informs me that there is a routine inspection every month.’

Before anyone else could question it to closely the secretary jumped in. ‘Let’s make a big deal of it in our quarterly newsletter. You know, a piece that lets everyone know we investigated, found nothing wrong, have replaced filters just in case.’

The secretary slumped back relieved as the treasurer took up his fight. ‘Consider that there are a lot of people in the building and that most of them probably haven’t heard of the death. We don’t want to alarm them unnecessarily. Plus as we already have a routine inspection why stretch the coffers for additional pointless checking.’

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