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Taiwanese, Zol had heard. The Oliveiras were resident managers with their own apartment on the ground floor. Gus, who used to be in construction, did the maintenance. Gloria, who had once been a bookkeeper and office manager, was clearly in charge.
    Zol read the closed-to-visitors notice on the front door as he held it open for Natasha. He’d ordered the Lodge quarantined the moment she’d told him about yesterday’s deaths. Of course, no one used the word
quarantine
these days — too frightening for the sensibilities of the modern public, too much like the nineteenth century and its epidemics of smallpox and typhus. The politically correct term was
closed to visitors
, with instructions to take enquiries to the front desk. The elusive pathogen had become a vicious adversary, its power escalating. The damn thing had killed five people in the past two weeks. Zol found it impossible not to think of the Q-word. He pictured the Prime Minister’s assistant at his desk beneath the Peace Tower, the name
Zol Szabo
scrawled on his to-do list.
    Inside the lobby, Zol and Natasha pumped hand sanitizer onto their palms. Zol usually made a show of rubbing a double shot of the pungent antiseptic over every centimetre of his hands. But there was no audience to impress. The common room was dark and deserted. A ball of yarn sat forgotten on a sofa cushion, and pieces of a jigsaw puzzle lay scattered across a card table.
    He waved away the smell of the alcoholic cleanser and swallowed a cough, then greeted the sombre-faced woman at the reception desk. He explained they were from the health unit, here for another inspection. Her name tag said Maria, and she was in no mood to offer a cheery welcome. She was probably frightened about coming to work, but had no choice if she were to put food on her family’s table — tortillas and refried beans by the whiffs of cumin and chipotle that fought the lingering odour of the sanitizer. Zol’s well-honed sense of smell told him more about a person’s traits and habits than any photograph. He followed Natasha as the woman led them through the hollow, unlit dining room and into the kitchen.
    The receptionist disappeared without a word, leaving Zol facing Nick, the chef. He of the lukewarm soup Art complained so much about. The man stood two inches taller than Zol, about six-three. He had a slim waist and the cultivated pecs of a cyclist or soccer player who did weights on the side.
    Nick leaned against his counter, an act of possession. “None of this has anything to do with my kitchen,” he told Zol. “Me and the boys, we run a tight ship. Eh guys?” His prominent brow and massive jaw framed a face that radiated too much confidence for Zol’s liking.
    Nick’s three helpers, men in their twenties, were absorbed in the chopping, stirring, and plating of impending lunch for thirty. One man was tall and skinny with blue-black skin, perhaps a Somali, Zol thought; one short, Asian, with hooded eyes and a pockmarked face; the third, stocky with a gleaming white scalp. All three raised their heads briefly from their tasks long enough to gape at Natasha.
    Natasha ignored the stares directed at her discreetly camouflaged cleavage and removed her clipboard from her briefcase, then set about her inspection. She checked the refrigerators and dishwasher for the required temperature probes and asked to see the logs that documented the twice-daily readings. She inspected both sinks and ran the water to be sure it got steamy hot. She checked every cupboard for general cleanliness, then looked more closely for signs of rodents — footprints and droppings. She opened bins of rice and other grains and probed them with a spoon for mould and weevils. She opened the refrigerator and looked in the crisper, sniffed every container, and examined every best-before date.
    Meanwhile, Zol looked in a few cupboards, then dropped his doctor facade and tried speaking casually