Exposed at the Back (18 page)

The B-Sample

‘Are we going to fly somewhere?’ Steinar asked, as they pulled off the E6 towards Gardermoen Airport. No answer. Vlad Vidić looked straight at Steinar in the mirror.

The car stopped. Vidić inserted his Visa card in the yellow machine, and the barrier went up. They drove into the car park, parked the SUV and went into the terminal.

Vidić was wearing a thin, white V-neck jumper that revealed his shaved chest. He was a little shorter than Steinar remembered, but he still resembled a bloodthirsty Serbian centre-back. His skin was even more wrinkled than before, and his shoulders even further apart. He’d probably been munching on his own steroid supplies since that fatal day at Ullevaal.

At security, Vidić grabbed a red plastic tray and held it so that Steinar could put in his belongings. They both made it through the metal detector without any trouble. Steinar was given back everything except his mobile. They walked along the terminal until they found an empty waiting area and sat down.

‘How did you manage to disappear?’ Vidić asked.

Steinar watched a lone man standing on the moving walkway.

Quitting football had been the toughest decision Steinar had ever made, but disappearing was easy. He was puzzled by sportspeople who complained to the media about having too much attention, who arranged press conferences to say they were fed up. When journalists got hold of Steinar, he’d just been plain with them: ‘Not interested.’

Steinar had run off and never needed to explain himself. He might handle the ball in the penalty box, he might grab an opponent’s shirt, and if the referee gave a throw-in to the wrong team, he wouldn’t say anything. That happened in the heat of the match, when anything was
allowed as long as the referee didn’t see it. But when Steinar saw the photos of the tablets being mixed into his juice, he knew immediately that football was dead to him.

‘What do you want from me?’ he asked.

‘You’re to stay away from us. Golden Boys will carry on as before without any interference from you. Arild Golden’s dead, that’s all.’

‘Did you kill him?’

A small airport buggy drove past. Vidić sat back in his seat. A man got off the buggy and picked up two plastic bottles. Vidić gave no sign of answering.

‘Oh, come on,’ said Steinar. ‘You can’t turn up again after all these years and not say anything. I’ll give it to you, you’re a pretty smooth operator. You take me to Gardermoen, you don’t say anything until you’ve eliminated the possibility I might be recording the conversation, and then you tell me to stay away. Just like
Scarface
, just like
The Sopranos
, hell, just like the whole Camorra all at once. But you’ve got to give me something. If I’m supposed to stay away from you, I’ve got to understand why.’

‘I can tell you that Golden was, for a long time, the best front man Golden Boys could wish for. But a few rumours started circulating recently, especially within Vålerenga, that Golden was racist. He was giving more attention to players like Per Diesen and Marius Bjartmann than to Kalid Jambo, Otto Cana or other foreign players.’

‘Is that true?’ asked Steinar. Vidić’s own origin was impossible to guess. It was even more surprising to hear his words come out without a trace of accent, without any clues as to a local dialect and not even a hint of class distinction. He spoke like a computer. But now he was silent.

‘I’ve got to know this in order to defend Taribo,’ said Steinar. ‘If you tell me, I might not need to dig any deeper.’

‘The most talented players in Norway come from Africa, so an agent must be able to deal with them,’ Vidić said.

‘So is that why he got Stanley pumped full of cortisone?’

‘The accusations of racism annoyed Golden. He wanted to show that he could still make transfers with foreign players. He had to get Stanley ready.’ Vidić lifted up his phone, which had just received a text message. He read it and answered quickly, using his thumb, before continuing.

‘West Ham wanted to take Stanley for several weeklong visits over
the next year until they could sign him aged 16. Of course, this was all supposed to be done under the table, so nobody else could snatch him.’

‘They were looking to do some try-outs with him?’

‘The club was having problems explaining things to their sponsors after several bad acquisitions at a difficult time financially. They needed more than Golden’s word so, in the end, Golden let that quack treat Stanley. In a few weeks’ time, Stanley was going to go over there and convince them. Together with Diesen’s transfer to Everton, this would show that Golden Boys once again had control of all trade from Scandinavia to the English market. If you wanted to go to England, you’d have to be the property of Golden Boys. The market’s like a house of cards. If one club falls away, others will follow and we’d lose our power. It was a panic reaction to inject Stanley full of cortisone, but it was also a sensible thing to do, in spite of everything.’

‘Did Golden know that you threatened me back then?’

Vidić raised his shoulders and put out the palms of his hands, like Italian footballers do after faking their way to a penalty.

‘How have you managed to stay anonymous all these years?’ asked Steinar.

‘I’ve always been there. Doing the dirty work, as you know from first-hand experience. A successful agency only needs one person on the outside. Only one face. We had Golden. Now I’ll have to step up a bit more than usual until we get another front man. That’s why I’m here to warn you. I don’t give a shit about the case against Taribo. He can rot in jail. What I want is for you to stop nosing around in Golden Boys’ business. You’re to stay away from Stanley, Diesen, Bjartmann, Jambo, Cana and all our other assets.’

‘And if I say no?’

‘Then I might take more than your football career away from you.’

Steinar’s impulse was to jump on Vidić and smash his head against the floor. He felt hatred bubbling inside of him, but there was a group of kids near them playing on a miniature plane. Steinar forced himself to sit still.

Vidić got up and gave Steinar his mobile.

‘By the way, those were some pretty strong caffeine tablets we gave you,’ he leaned over Steinar, ‘but you were never doped.’

Football and That Little Xtra

Benedikte sat at the back of the studio control room, which was built like a gallery, rows of desks facing a wall of TV screens of various sizes and a red digital clock counting down to transmission time. Behind the wall was the studio itself.

As TV programmes go,
Football Xtra
was an adrenaline kick. The minutes leading up to live broadcast were nerve-wracking, and during the transmission it was pure fire-fighting. There were always technical problems and items that wouldn’t play, guests who gave the opposite answer to the one they’d been expected to give, which could stifle any further discussion.

Per Diesen, Marius Bjartmann and Sabrina arrived at the studio just before transmission. Benedikte hid behind her Chelsea cap and her computer as the trio went past into the studio, where Stig Nilsen went through the programme schedule with them. Through her headset, Benedikte heard everything they said. Nilsen and Bjartmann had a short, awkward chat about the knee injury that put an end to Nilsen’s career. Football injuries stayed with both the victim and the perpetrator.

As for Sabrina, she had her arms round Diesen’s neck. They really looked in love. Benedikte wondered whether Diesen might have heard about Sabrina and Golden and forgiven them. Or was it the case, like so many times before, that the ones involved were the last to find out?

Stig looked at the young glamour model. ‘Who the hell do you think you are, hanging all over him like that?’ he said. ‘Some kind of onesie?’

There was cheering in the control room. If that’s what Nilsen’s debut as a presenter was going to be like, it would be legendary.

Stig checked his chair, which was close to the edge of the high platform the studio furniture was on. Benedikte had also been worried the first time.

A Rammstein song led viewers through a montage of hard tackles from the previous weekend before Stig welcomed them to that day’s action.

‘On today’s programme I’ve got Norway’s new superstar, Sabrina, the tough centre-back Marius Bjartmann, and finally midfielder Per Diesen.’

Stig went on with the latest updates on injuries and match bans. Then he did the obligatory round trip of the football grounds. 10 minutes into the programme, the guy next to Benedikte shook his head. ‘This is fucking boring!’ he said. ‘What’s happened to Nilsen?’

Stig gave his analysis of how poor Start were at covering the space in front of the back four, something Vålerenga had only partially taken advantage of in the match the previous day. What was he thinking? He was supposed to swear. Had Stig Nilsen become too serious?

The programme went to a break after 22 minutes. Then they were back a few minutes later. A wide shot of the studio, then the camera zoomed in on Stig. ‘Welcome back,’ he said, before darkness fell both on the studio and on Stig’s face. Benedikte grabbed hold of the intercom.

‘Relax,’ she said.

Smoke rose quickly from behind the J-shaped glass table, and loud hip-hop rhythms thumped out in the studio. Diesen and Bjartmann got up and crossed their arms, drumming along with the beat while thrusting their heads back and forth.

They were wearing white jackets on top of white linen shirts. The suit jackets had thin, barely visible silver pinstripes. Their shirts were open wide enough so that viewers could see a hint of the well-trained muscles on their chests. Diesen was wearing a silver piece of jewellery, hanging from a black leather strap, and a gleaming bracelet. He combed his fingers through his hair. They both looked good, but Diesen had that little extra. He looked like a real pop star.

In one synchronised movement, they pulled at their jackets so they tore up the back, then threw away the remaining strips of cloth. Sabrina jumped up on the table and started gyrating, while Diesen slid his hands down over his white shirt. He started miming the lyrics.

‘You’ve got to bleed, bleed, bleed for our team.’

Bjartmann stood there with a steely expression on his face, looking sternly at Diesen before taking the next line.

‘We’re the ones to take you to the extreme.’

Sabrina performed an erotic dance lying on the studio desk. Then
she jumped up on all fours, threw back her torso, shot up her right shoulder and mimed along.

‘Hunt out that autumn dream.’

The song faded out with a long full-time whistle. Diesen and Bjartmann pointed both arms to the right, while Sabrina ended up horizontal.

Nobody had scored during the adverts or the song, and maybe that’s why Stig didn’t say anything. The silence was embarrassingly long. Benedikte heard Bertil Olsen over the intercom: ‘You’ve got to give them some praise! Say something, man!’

Nilsen cleared his throat. ‘Excellent stuff, folks. The single “Bleed for the Team” is on sale in most record shops, or you can download it free on the Internet if you think these lads make enough money as it is.’

‘You idiot!’ shouted Olsen. ‘Ask about the assault, ask about her black eye!’

Once again the silence lasted too long. Bertil Olsen told Stig again, turning it into a direct threat. Stig looked at Sabrina, let out a sigh and finally spoke again:

‘But it hasn’t been very easy for you lately, has it?’

‘No, it was a terrible thing that happened,’ said Sabrina, touching the black eye that had been added to her face with make-up. ‘Oslo, my childhood home, the city I love so much, isn’t…’

‘Sorry, something’s just happened at… at Marienlyst Stadion in Drammen,’ said Nilsen. He handed over to a bewildered reporter who said something about a semi-doubtful offside.

‘What the hell are you doing?’ asked Bertil Olsen. Nilsen didn’t seem to be bothered and spent the rest of the programme’s first half asking for updates from reporter after reporter.

The control room emptied during the break. A pizza delivery from Dolly Dimple’s was on the way. Only Benedikte stayed. On the monitor, she saw Stig get up and cross behind Bjartmann and Diesen.

‘I’ll just switch off your microphones during the break,’ he said. It had taken the production assistant three attempts to fix them back on during the short items between comments from the studio, so the lads didn’t argue when Nilsen went on to explain: ‘That way we won’t have any more fuss in the second half.’

Very smooth, Benedikte thought.

‘I’ve got to take a piss,’ said Nilsen.

Diesen and Bjartmann followed out of the studio close behind him,
while Sabrina sat down on the floor in a kind of lotus position, closing her eyes. Benedikte hid again behind her cap and her computer monitor. As the lads passed through the control room, she spotted a green light on Diesen’s back pocket.

When Benedikte worked on the breakfast show, she’d got used to checking that the guests didn’t take their microphones with them. It still happened quite often. The guests brought them back quite sheepishly and couldn’t help asking if Benedikte had heard them at home or at work.

The truth was that the microphones’ range was very limited. The signal vanished when the guests left the studio building, but it was strong enough for Benedikte to listen to Diesen and Bjartmann talking in the corridor.

Benedikte pressed the earphones as close to her eardrums as possible.

‘I thought you wanted to go your own way now, that you were going to find an agent who would just represent you. And why Ola Bugge?’ asked Bjartmann.

‘I believe in him. We need somebody who’ll get stuck in for us like Arild used to.’

Bullshit. Absolute bullshit, Benedikte thought. She was certain Diesen was lying, and she had to find out why. It would be cowardly of her to stay in Bergen now, and she couldn’t live with that. Her dad had called her the world’s toughest girl when she overcame her leukaemia. She’d been fighting it from when she was four until her recovery at seven. Fighting against billions of cancer cells trying to oust her platelets and red and white blood cells. She’d had to take one cytotoxic drug after another. She’d lost her hair and her friends. She’d been teetering on the edge of death, but she’d fought back.

Benedikte couldn’t understand why anybody would choose to put their career in Bugge’s hands, let alone why Norway’s hottest footballer would try to persuade others to do the same.

Diesen was talking crap, and there could only be one reason for that. Bugge had to be blackmailing him, and Benedikte would have to go back to Oslo to confront him on that very matter.

To hell with the threats. She’d cheated death before, she could do it again.