Exposed at the Back (17 page)

XYZ

‘Yes?’

‘Benedikte Blystad to meet Birger Holme.’

‘Come on up.’

A small click. Benedikte opened the door and went into the NFF’s reception at Ullevaal Stadion.

Nobody was using Ullevaal that day. Vålerenga had played an away match against Start in Kristiansand the day before, and it was a long time until the next international. But the main reason it was empty was that Holme and Benedikte had agreed to meet on a Sunday morning.

Ahead of the entrance door was the changing room area. When she’d started working as a reporter for
Sports Review
, Benedikte had hung around after matches with the other journalists there in the mixed zone, where they waited for over-dramatic statements from young footballers or angry coaches leaving in protest. It wasn’t that difficult to judge what state of mind footballers would be in.

But this was also where Steinar Brunsvik had been presented with an impossible choice to make. Benedikte thought for a moment about the young
VG
journalist who hadn’t understood what was going on when the national team’s highest-profile player had left the stadium during half time.

She went up the stairs and into the long corridor where the NFF offices were. The association’s logo was woven into the carpet. She skimmed through some of the names on the two large plaques in honour of those with 50 or more caps. The plaques looked like two giant beer labels. She walked past a display case with some kind of Ming vase inside. It was surely an innocent gift, but it reminded her of what Boltedal had said about them all being corrupt.

Outside the window she saw the empty rows of plastic seats. In
the east stand, the
VG
Stand, blue seats spelt out the word ‘Ullevaal’ amongst the red seats.

Benedikte had been to all the Tippeligaen and First Division grounds in Norway. The TV crew always arrived several hours before the match started, so the sight of an empty football stadium was nothing new to her. What always surprised her was that clubs managed to sell seating as advertising, with hundreds of chairs spelling out a company’s name, even though the name could only be read if there was nobody at the match. It was advertising space for companies who wanted to sponsor losers.

She looked at the other side of the stadium, where Arild Golden’s office was. There was just one stand separating her from the crime scene. She carried on to Holme’s office.

His office was empty, so Benedikte took out her mobile but like so many times before at Ullevaal there was no sign of a signal. How was the NFF supposed to pick up what grassroots Norwegian football was saying if they couldn’t even get a phone signal?

Benedikte tried sending a text: ‘Where are you?’

She sat down and took out a plastic folder with some print-outs she’d made of reports on research into synthetic turf.

Then a noise, as if somebody had closed a door. Benedikte leant forward, craning her neck so she could see down the corridor, but everything was silent. She sighed and went on reading a report about the use of a specific type of synthetic grass, called XYZ.

For prestigious facilities like top division pitches, Golden had made sure to get the best types of artificial grass. The real scam was aimed at the smaller clubs, where the rock-hard XYZ was used, like at Nordre Åsen.

XYZ was also used in the vast majority of the country’s indoor arenas, large and small, including Årvoll. And the developers, both in the public and private sectors, had done everything they could to save money on something as important as ventilation. Was that such a lethal combination that it might cause cancer?

She was going to force answers out of Holme. If TV2 found out she was still investigating the story, she’d need something heavy to slam on the table, a story so good that they would have to show it.

She walked along the corridor and into the boardroom. The floor was covered with wide, brown wooden panels, blue upholstered chairs around an oval table. All the old association presidents stared down at
her from black-and-white photographs on the walls. Apart from them, this room was empty too.

What if Holme had suffered a heart attack? Maybe he was lying down the corridor fighting for his life. There had to be something, as he’d let her in after all. Or had the voice on the entry phone belonged to somebody else? The sound had been crackly, but she’d just assumed it was him. What if it was somebody who altered their voice so that she’d think it was Holme?

Benedikte’s phone beeped as a text message arrived, making her jump. She unlocked the keypad and read the message from Holme: ‘But I thought you’d cancelled?’

She ran towards the exit.

Back then, long ago, all her trouble had started in her bone marrow and spread through her blood, so from then on she’d always been in a hurry. She wanted to do everything. Life could be so short. Now she was being chased again. The monsters were back.

She was grabbed from behind, a cloth over her nose and mouth. She couldn’t help trying to breathe. Then she passed out.

Vroom

Steinar put down the phone.

His eyes were wide open, even though he hadn’t slept more than a few minutes that night. Junior’s chickenpox had been itchy, and the boy had been crying, it all felt like one big hangover. The lack of sleep dulled his senses, but he had to get to the police station as soon as possible.

Junior was sitting quietly at the computer, watching a cartoon that Steinar couldn’t remember putting on. He must have nodded off after all. He walked across the floor and, unable to hold himself back, gave Junior’s racetrack a kick. Technically the racetrack was a three-storey car park, but it was easier to call it a racetrack. ‘Shall we play with the car park?’ sounded a bit dull.

It was blue with yellow stripes showing the direction of travel. It had a car wash with water and brush sounds, and a helipad with loud rotor blade noises. There was a lift that went ‘ping’ when the cars reached the top, and a photoelectric sensor that set off a powerful engine noise every time a car went past on its way back down. The photoelectric sensor was very sensitive.

The car park play set was normally part of Steinar’s evening checklist. He went around checking that the door was locked, the coffee machine was switched off, the oven dials were pointing to zero and this toy was unplugged. That night he’d had more than enough trouble lulling Junior to sleep, and once they’d both finally managed to get to sleep, the car park came to life.

‘Vrooooooom!’

Junior had woken up and started scratching again, which meant another three hours of wandering round the house.

Steinar took Junior and lifted him up with his right arm while carrying the laptop under his left. He walked over the road to Bjørnar
Ramstad’s parents’ house and rang the doorbell. It was Bjørnar’s mother who opened up.

‘Would you mind if Junior sits with you for a couple of hours and watches a video?’

‘Of course not. Come on in, Junior,’ said Mrs Ramstad.

Steinar felt relieved. He’d known Bjørnar’s parents all his life and trusted them a hundred per cent, but it was still so hard to ask, so hard to have to depend on other people.

Steinar got in the taxi, which drove him quickly past the Sinsen junction, along Trondheimsveien and onto Grønlandsleiret, the main artery through Grønland, where every building was either a snack bar serving halal meat or an old pub of the all-brown-interior sort. Nowhere else in the Western world could have a higher density of kebabs, khat and Carlsberg than Grønland.

Steinar got out at the police station and reported to reception. He was escorted to the fifth floor and the red zone of the Section for Violent and Sexual Crimes, where Inspector Håvard Lange was based.

Lange was waiting for Steinar. He shook his hand briefly and showed him into his office. Lange undid the buttons on his shirt cuffs and rolled them up.

‘Do you still think Taribo Shorunmo’s innocent?’ he asked.

‘Why do you ask?’

‘He’s run off.’

… And Now It’s Over to Ullevaal

Benedikte couldn’t move her body, only her eyes. She looked to the right, then to the left, making out a pair of black, polished leather shoes, some white tape and a floor of green tiles. She would recognise that shade of green anywhere. She was lying on her stomach in the changing room showers at Ullevaal. Something was blocking her mouth. Benedikte bit down on something soft that tasted like glue.

She heard a click. Water gushed over her face and into her mouth. She swallowed and spat, but the water was too much. Then it stopped.

She coughed up water and tried to bite down again. The man must have forced a roll of tape into her mouth. That was why it tasted like glue. And, just as she heard another click, she pictured the hole in the middle of any roll of tape.

Another burst of water. She kept fighting against it, but she could feel her energy fading. She’d heard that water torture was the worst thing you could do to a person, but she hadn’t believed it until now. She thought she was going to die. She was going to die here at Ullevaal.

She remembered in her mind’s eye a scene from when she was seven years old, but it was not at the hospital. It was from after that, when she thought she was free. Some older boys had decided they were going to bully the delicate little girl who had reappeared in the neighbourhood. They chased her, and she escaped by running inside the nearest block of flats.

She didn’t think the boys had seen her run inside, and she went up to the first floor. Then she heard the door. One of the lads was coming up behind her. She crept to the second floor, hugging the wall. Then up to the third and top floor. Could she slide down the rubbish chute? Should she knock on the nearest door?

She lay down. He wouldn’t bother to come all the way up, would
he? The boy came closer, and by the time their eyes met when he was four or five steps away from her on the top floor, Benedikte had started sobbing uncontrollably. The boys were so much stronger than her that they could do whatever they wanted.

The boy looked at her for a couple of seconds, then he turned and went back down without saying a word.

The water stopped.

Benedikte coughed up what she could through the opening in the tape. The man must have ripped off the shower head to make the jet of water so strong. It felt as if every drop was shooting into her mouth. Could she take another round of this? She looked at the tiles and concentrated.

‘Please,’ she said, but ity just came out as a grunt. She tightened every muscle in her body.

Click.

She couldn’t spit the water out anymore. She felt everything go black, but she managed to count down. She knew how long it would last now. Five, four, three, two, one, now. The water stopped. She knew how long it would last, but she also knew her own body. She couldn’t take another burst.

The man doing this still hadn’t uttered a word.

She felt the sharp nail of her little finger and dug it into the fleshy palm of her hand, but she could barely feel it. She tried to press it hard into the sensitive area next to her thumb, but she couldn’t reach. Then she jammed her ring finger into the join between two tiles and twisted it as hard as she could. It started to hurt. Finally. Pain.

Click.

The water was coming again.

She twisted her finger until it was almost out of joint. The pain rose higher and higher.

The water struck her on the back instead. The man had turned on the next shower along. He then lowered an iPhone straight in front of Benedikte’s face. Two blue balloons danced on the screen together with a lop-sided smiley face. He pressed a button, and out of the loudspeaker came a recorded message with a distorted helium voice.

‘This is your final warning. Forget everything to do with the Golden case. Next time I will kill you.’

Unstoppable

Steinar read a copy of the press release the police had just issued. Why had Taribo done something so idiotic as to run off? Was he guilty after all?

Taribo had lied about the man in the picture on the fridge, now he’d escaped from prison. How could Steinar possibly defend him? High-profile cases were problematic and demanding enough without this.

‘What happened?’ asked Steinar.

‘He jumped over the wall,’ said Inspector Lange.

‘How is that possible? What about the guards?’

‘Taribo was in solitary confinement, as you know, separated from the other prisoners, so he was just there with a single prison officer in the exercise yard.’

‘But didn’t the officer try to stop him?’

‘Your client is a mountain of a man. The prisons in Norway, just like the police, are seriously understaffed. What was he supposed to do?’

Steinar always felt annoyed when people passed the buck, he’d asked about what happened, not whether their budget was enough.

‘Have you found any trace of his movements?’

‘He flagged down a car just outside the prison on Åkebergveien. Since then he’s been seen together with his son, giving him a hug before he drove on.’

‘Stanley, his son, turns 15 today.’

‘Then Taribo drove out to IKEA at Furuset. He left the car in the car park and proceeded on foot, but we don’t know where. And that’s where you come in.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘Do you know anything about this?’

‘Of course not.’

‘Taribo might try to get in touch.’

‘My loyalty’s to my client.’ Steinar got up. ‘I don’t suppose there was anything else?’

Steinar left the police station and walked towards Grønlandsleiret, wondering whether they were going to keep him under observation now. He looked at a Mercedes SUV parked on the other side of the road. The driver rolled down the window.

‘Get in,’ said Vlad Vidić.

I Left My Heart in Bergen

The sun stung Benedikte’s eyes when she managed to open the door and walk out of the NFF offices. She moved her head back and put her hand over her eyes as she staggered along, her socks drenched with water.

She walked straight into the road at the roundabout, a taxi heading towards her. The driver waved his arms angrily, making threatening gestures, but Benedikte just concentrated on getting across the road.

She stopped on the footbridge over the ring road and leant against the railing. One by one, the cars sped by. She wanted to speed away too, away from Oslo.

She could feel that her T-shirt was still wet as she walked down the ramp on the other side of the ring road, past Sogn Upper Secondary School and along to the petrol station.

There was a display of football gear at the petrol station. Benedikte grabbed a dark blue Chelsea cap and matching shirt, and went to pay. She went into the toilet, where she had to fight with an uncooperative lock for a few seconds before managing to close the door. Her hands wouldn’t stop shaking. She put down the toilet lid and sat down. She cried her eyes out, burying her head in the Chelsea shirt.

Her friends and colleagues teased her for supporting Chelsea. It was a team that bought its glory, and nobody who knew anything about football was cheering about the influx of new Russian money. And there were other teams to avoid as well. Real Madrid could never be forgiven for its connections to Franco, and nobody other than Berlusconi could love AC Milan. It was more morally and intellectually proper to support teams such as Inter or Barcelona or, perhaps even better, obscure clubs such as the Dutch team AZ Alkmaar.

Benedikte had supported Chelsea ever since her father bought her
a cap back when she needed it the most. He’d explained to her in his grown-up but trembling voice about the little soldiers of the body, and that she just had too many of them.

Now, once a year, she combined shopping, drinks and football in the London club’s fashionable West End district. A Caramel Frappuccino from Starbucks on the King’s Road seemed infinitely far away at that moment.

She threw her socks and T-shirt in the bin. She’d have to live with her shoes and trousers. She fished out a hair band from her trouser pocket, put her hair in a ponytail and pulled the cap down at the front. Then she left the petrol station and hailed a taxi.

‘Gardermoen Airport,’ she said, sinking into the clammy seat. She felt hungover, like after a really heavy night on the town and are tormented by a repetitive noise. In this case, the noise was that childish helium voice. ‘Next time I will kill you.’ Over and over again.

‘What do you do for a living?’ the taxi driver asked.

‘I’m a flight attendant,’ said Benedikte, grateful that there were Pakistani taxi drivers who didn’t watch TV2.

The driver didn’t ask anything else, just kept his eyes on the road. Signs with the Maxbo,
Dagbladet
and DHL logos vanished in quick succession as they drove past.

Benedikte thought about Bergen. She’d never grown fond of the city, but she liked the mountains there. Oslo didn’t have any mountains, only insignificant rocks on the city’s outskirts.

She wanted to get far away from this stupid and dangerous investigation. From now on, she’d stay in Bergen and work on her normal, harmless sports stories. There could never be too many ‘at home with…’ reports on Brann players.

She would bury herself in routine stories, and she’d go mountain running in her spare time. It was a long time since she’d gone up the track to the top of Ulriken, and she loved it when it was pouring with rain or when the fog meant that she had to feel her way to the top.

She rubbed her chin, which was still sore after being pressed against the tiles.

She arrived at the airport just after 12 o’ clock, went over to the SAS ticket desk and bought a one-way ticket to Bergen before getting in the queue for security, her eyes fixed on the floor. She pulled her cap even further down over her face as she put her Visa card, some coins, her iPhone and her dark red lipstick on the plastic tray and sent it through
the X-ray machine. She was sure she didn’t have anything metallic on her, but the detector beeped when she went through.

The security officer already had his eyes on her. He asked her to put her hands out to the sides while he passed a metal detector over her body. His hands touched her trousers. Had he noticed that they were soaking wet? ‘Please,’ she thought, ‘just let me through without any questions.’

‘You’ll have to put your trainers through,’ he said. Benedikte did as she was told and stood there in her bare feet while she waited for her shoes to catch up with her at the end of the conveyor belt. The security officer had turned his attention to the next blonde female terrorist.

She put her feet back in her shoes, bending them at the heels. She thought she heard one of her shoes’ heel tabs snap, but she just moved to the stairs that led to the Sinnataggen restaurant on the first floor. She practically started running when she spotted a young boy outside the security area holding a helium balloon from TGI Friday’s.

It was a surprise to her that she might be in danger. She realised that she might be risking her job by continuing her investigations into Golden’s links with astroturf, but she would never have believed that she was risking her life. She took off her shoe and straightened the heel. Then she took off the other and lifted up her feet, sitting on a sofa bench while looking at the crowd of people below.

An hour later, Sabrina turned up with a young man in tow. She was wearing jeans stuffed inside a pair of brown leather boots, a white T-shirt with a picture of Michael Jackson and some large, black sunglasses that looked like insect eyes. Hanging on her left arm was a small, gold handbag. Benedikte recognised the man from the weekly magazines as Sabrina’s PA. He was wearing a light blue Tommy Hilfiger piqué T-shirt and made gestures accompanying every word he said. Benedikte had completely forgotten that Sabrina was going to appear with Per Diesen and Marius Bjartmann on that day’s
Football Xtra
. The boys had probably stayed in Kristiansand after the game the day before and would be travelling straight from there. Benedikte watched Sabrina from where she was sitting until the departure screen read ‘Boarding’.

Benedikte was last to get on the flight and she glanced up the cabin past the shoulder of the man in front. Sabrina and her assistant were sitting halfway up the plane. Benedikte was in seat 23, so she’d have to go past them.

Benedikte didn’t want Sabrina to recognise her. For all she knew, Sabrina might decide to blab on air about seeing her, or maybe she would mention it to somebody else, then it might seem as if Benedikte were following her. The man in the showers at Ullevaal had been crystal clear, she should stay away from anything to do with the Golden case.

Luckily, Sabrina and her PA were too busy talking to each other. Immediately behind them was a young man in an army uniform. A soldier on his way home on leave, perhaps?

As Benedikte went past, she partially covered her face with her right hand. She took out a 500 kroner note and the stub of her boarding pass and gave them to the boy in uniform in seat 17C. He lit up when Benedikte winked at him, as he realised what was going on. He took the money and the ticket, and disappeared towards the back of the cabin.

Benedikte sat down and listened for the whole flight.

‘Kalid was my first,’ said Sabrina as they were approaching Bergen. Benedikte sat up. ‘We were together for a year before I broke up with him. It made him crazy.’

‘He’s been in touch with the agency. He wanted to know about your diary, he was asking like totally flat out.’

‘Jeeeeez! He plays on the same team as Per. You know, I’ve actually wondered whether it might be him who’s been calling up and breathing down the phone over the past few days.’

‘About that, we’ve got to have a word about how we’re going to spin it.’

‘I’d rather forget about it. Such an invasion of my privacy, it’s horrible to have something like that happen to you.’

‘I know it’s not easy, but it sells. It’s sexy, girlfriend. That’s why I’ve exaggerated it. I leaked it to
Dagbladet
that you were assaulted and that it’s really traumatic for you to appear on TV. We’ve just got to think about how big to make the black eye we’ll give you in make-up when you go on air.’

Sabrina paused for thought. ‘But will I look sexy like
that
? With a black eye?’

‘Honey, you’ll always be sexy. You’re fabulous. But we’ve got to exploit the situation. It’ll give your online hits a real boost. The advertising revenue will hit the sky if we play it right. The tabloids, the glossy magazines. They’ll be outbidding each other to get the rights to reconstruct Sabrina’s week of terror.’

Benedikte saw the PA using his fingers to make air quotes around
what he clearly imagined the tabloid headline would be.

‘But it’ll be a lie,’ said Sabrina.

‘Sabrina darling, we all have our challenges. Your career’s going fine at the moment, but you’re not getting any younger. There’ll always be someone ready to take your place. We’ve got to think about what’s next? We’ve got to keep people interested in you. There’s no doubt that your music career does best when you’ve got an active role on TV. After guest-starring on
Paradise Hotel
, you’re sort of in limbo at the moment. It’s difficult to get a break on quality reality shows these days. And
PDTV
, I mean I totally love it, but it is mainly Per’s show. If we’re not careful, you might, like, end up as the cook for the food section of the show. But if we play our cards right this PR might keep you on top for weeks to come.’

‘Should I let out any hints that I think it’s Kalid?’

‘No, no, it’s more important to play on how awful it’s been. How hard it is for you to go on TV live. Traumatised, sweetie.’

It was strange to notice a generation gap at the age of 26, Benedikte thought, feeling grateful for the silence that always accompanied the final approach.

They’d barely landed when Sabrina shot out of her seat. She was one of the few people who were able to stand up straight under the overhead compartments. Her PA stood bent over next to her for the remaining few minutes it took the crew to prepare to offload the passengers. Benedikte pretended she was sleeping, her cap over her face. Next to her, an older woman was starting to become impatient. Benedikte wished she’d just relax.

Once they were inside the terminal, Benedikte didn’t dare to follow them. It was too difficult, somebody could have their eye on her without her noticing. She decided to take a taxi straight to the TV2 studios instead.

She had lost count of how many times she’d driven along the road from Flesland Airport into Bergen. On the way, she would see Fana Stadion and, just before the centre, Krohnsminde sports ground. She would also always crane her neck from the back seat to see Troldhaugen, the home of composer Edvard Grieg, and Gamlehaugen, the royal residence in Bergen. Today was no exception, and seeing those familiar sights calmed her nerves.

Benedikte had a small flat within walking distance of TV2. She’d spent every other week in Bergen and its reputation for eternally rainy
weather was justified. She looked out of the window towards the main square in Torgallmenningen while they drove on at high speed along Vaskerelven. The taxi roared over the cobblestones past the theatre, and they just caught the green light before turning the corner and driving towards Nøstet, where the studios were.

She went into reception, made up an excuse that she’d lost her key card and luggage, and took the lift up. She took out an outfit from the wardrobe and changed in the make-up room. Karianne put on a light layer of make-up for her and fixed her hair. She was feeling better and started chatting.

Then she went over to Stig Nilsen, who was checking over the programme schedule for the day. As usual, she was given a long hug, but today she felt like she actually needed it. Then she put her arm on Stig’s shoulder as nonchalantly as she could.

‘Can you do me a favour?’ she asked.

‘Yes?’

‘During the break, can you trick the lads into keeping their microphones on?’

‘Why?’

‘I’m just curious.’

‘Fine.’

‘Good luck for your first programme,’ said Benedikte, letting go.

‘Shit, thanks!’ said Stig, shrugging his shoulders.