Assad had a morning appointment at the offices of the Immigration Service, which was the new name the government had assigned to its old system of sorting out aliens, the Immigration Administration, in order to put a nice face on the situation. In the meantime, Carl would be running all over town taking care of business.The previous evening he had slipped the little Playmobil family out of Morten’s treasure chamber while his lodger was on duty at the video shop. Right now, the toys were lying on the seat next to him, giving him cold and reproachful looks as he headed into the wilds of northern Zealand.The house in Skævinge, where the driver Dennis Knudsen had been found after suffocating on his own vomit, was like all the other houses on the road. None of them had even a trace of beauty, yet in their slovenly, workmanlike way, they seemed oddly harmonious with their worn terraces and breeze-block construction. In terms of durable material, the Eternit roofing appeared to match the ready-to-discard, lustreless windows.Carl had expected a solid-looking construction-worker to open the door, or at least the female equivalent.
