Exposed at the Back (16 page)

Hidden Transfers

As he rang the doorbell, Steinar realised he wouldn’t be winning ‘Dad of the Year’ this year either. He was at a house on Dyretråkket, a street in the suburb of Holmlia. On the outside, it was painted an eggshell colour and had red cladding. It was impossible to guess how many flats there were inside. He was standing at the entry door, in the shadow of a large veranda.

He’d had three missed calls when he left his meeting with Taribo. No journalists this time, they were all from Jenna at the nursery. Steinar had called her back and was told to come immediately. She was threatening to exclude Junior.

Why were there so many Swedes working in nurseries in Oslo anyway? And in bars too? If it was true that only kids and drunk people told the truth, then the Swedes would soon have a monopoly on shaping it.

Changing nurseries was something Steinar absolutely didn’t want to go through. It’d taken a lot of work to get a place for Junior at that place, and the boy loved it there. Steinar had poured out his troubles over the phone, being a single father and all that, and Jenna had thawed a little.

Luckily, Bjørnar’s parents were more than glad to look after Junior for a couple of hours. They lived next door and had helped Steinar out before. They were usually able to help, unless they were on one of their many visits to Steinar’s parents in Spain.

Steinar rang the doorbell again, and Stanley’s mother opened the door.

‘What do you want?’ she asked.

‘Read this before you say another word,’ said Steinar, passing her the envelope.

She kept her eyes on Steinar for a long moment then slowly lowered
her gaze, took out the letter and read it.

She opened the door and waved Steinar in. He sat down at the kitchen table as instructed, and accepted the offer of coffee. Steinar watched her while she served. She was in her late thirties and had a bit too much of everything, too many wrinkles, her hair a bit overgrown, and a bit too much padding.

‘I’m sorry that I was a little abrupt just now. Let’s start again. My name’s Mona Johansen, and you must be Taribo’s lawyer, right? I was told he was arrested, but since then it’s been impossible to get in touch with him. How’s he doing in there?’

‘He’s fine, all things considered, but he’s in solitary confinement.’

‘But you can bring messages?’

‘I’m stretching the rules. I won’t do it any more, but it was important for you to know what Taribo wanted for Stanley.’

‘What do you think about the case?’

‘I don’t like the fact the police seem so pleased with themselves. They’ve more or less stopped investigations and are positive that Taribo’s guilty. When that happens, getting a conviction is often a piece of cake.’

‘The police can’t be bothered to look any more once they’ve found somebody. Especially not when there’s someone who fits the profile as well as Taribo does. Black, and an illegal immigrant.’

Steinar blew on his coffee, which was made with water from a kettle and two teaspoons of Nescafé. It was still far too hot. He knew how easy it was to make sweeping generalisations. Nescafé? He’d had slightly higher expectations when it came to coffee served in a half-African home.

‘But can we afford to pay you? Aren’t lawyers like you very expensive?’ asked Mona.

‘My fees will be covered by the state. Besides, this case has also given me two other sources of future income. A case like this will make my business better known, and I’ll have the rights to represent Stanley.’

‘At least you’re honest. There have been several other agents here trying to court Stanley since Arild Golden died, and they made it out as if we should thank the Lord they would deign to have anything to do with our son.’

‘Did you meet Golden?’

‘Yes.’

‘What impression did you get of him?’

‘Definitely a capable businessman. He told us when we signed with him Stanley would get an immediate offer from West Ham’s academy. He also presented a business plan showing how Stanley would make it rich within the next few years. But that bastard was cynical to the core.’

‘In what way?’

‘Stanley had a number of physical problems. Pain in one of his knees and in both Achilles tendons. You know, Stanley was lured over to Skeid two years ago. Vålerenga, Lyn, Stabæk and Skeid were all begging for him, and when it turned out that Holmlia’s own team couldn’t offer him good enough training, we decided that he could move clubs, but we let him make the decision for himself. He chose Skeid because he knew a number of players there. We organised everything so he could get from school to his training sessions and matches. Everything went fine until Stanley began to complain of these injuries.’

‘What did you do?’

‘I took him along to our GP. He’s got a son of his own who plays on Holmlia’s junior team and played with Stanley before he went to Skeid. He diagnosed Stanley with the early stages of jumper’s knee and chronic Achilles tendonitis.’

‘Did you tell Golden?’ asked Steinar.

‘He was furious. He said that we had to keep it to ourselves. He also wanted to send Stanley to a specialist he knew. Well, after Golden’s death, we found out what that miracle doctor was doing. Naturally, he wouldn’t see Stanley again once Golden wasn’t paying him, so we took Stanley back to our GP. He spoke with Stanley, examined him again and became suspicious. Golden’s doctor had been giving him cortisone injections. These helped with his knee and tendon problems in the short term, but they could give him enormous problems later in life. His tendons might snap in a few years’ time. Our doctor called it madness to use cortisone in treatment like that, especially with a young boy.’

‘Do you know why he did that?’ said Steinar, wondering whether that was the reason Taribo had threatened Golden.

‘Golden had struck a deal with West Ham. Stanley was due to go to them in August, and these days there’s big money to be made by agents. The clubs where he played before can’t claim anything more than some small change if he goes to an academy.’

‘What do you mean?’ asked Steinar.

‘Golden called them hidden transfers, because Stanley wouldn’t
be sold to the professional part of the club. First he would go to the academy, where they can only pay him board and lodging, plus a few scraps of pocket money, so West Ham wouldn’t need to buy him. But there was an agreement under the table that he would graduate from the academy into their first team squad. We would share a lump sum payment for the transfer with Golden Boys, which West Ham were only too happy to pay, because it was a lot less than the sum Skeid and Holmlia would’ve got from a professional transfer.’

‘And Golden told you this?’

‘We had to give him our consent, after all. He said it was normal. In cases when the clubs were especially keen, as they were with Stanley, they were willing to give the agent several million kroner under the table. Golden promised us half of the money, but we didn’t know about that business with the injections.’

They heard the door close and Stanley came in. He took off his red hoodie, pulling up his grey T-shirt in the process, revealing a six-pack. Stanley put his hoodie on a chair and pulled his T-shirt back down, then took out his MP3 player and shook Steinar by the hand. He was almost as tall and muscular as his father.

‘How’s it going?’ asked Steinar.

Stanley looked Steinar up and down before giving a shrug.

‘Can we have a chat?’ asked Steinar. Stanley didn’t answer but came and sat down.

‘I’ll go into the living room, so you two can speak,’ Mona said, leaving the kitchen.

Stanley and Steinar made small talk for a few minutes. Stanley didn’t seem very interested to start with, but he gradually started to listen once he realised Steinar had been a good footballer, an international professional.

‘Your dad wants me to be your agent,’ said Steinar.

Stanley’s face lit up.

‘Yes!’ he said, slapping Steinar on the back.

Steinar had spent the past day reading about young Norwegian players lured to various big teams’ academies. Almost without exception, they came back like slaughtered animals and spent years trying to build up a fraction of the career they might have had, wrecks as footballers, and wrecks in terms of their education too. The educational side of foreign football academies seemed a bit of a joke. Stanley would have his breakthrough at home in Norway before being sold. If he was going
to be the boy’s agent, Steinar would build him up both as a player and a person.

‘But the most important thing is to get you into a proper secondary school where you can get some good exam marks. However you do as a football player, your education will always be useful.’

Steinar heard the floor creaking and looked up to see Mona standing in the doorway.

‘I think we might be able to work together,’ she said.

Steinar was glad to have gained their trust, but his happiness was short-lived. Stuck on the fridge, behind a magnet, was a picture that Steinar hadn’t noticed until now. A picture of Stanley and his dad, Taribo, at a football match, flanked by another bundle of muscles over 6 feet tall. They had their arms around each other and were smiling. Maybe they were celebrating a win. They were certainly happy. Especially the man that Steinar had seen together with Taribo at Nordre Åsen. The man that Taribo denied knowing. Taribo, who he had to defend in a murder case, had lied to him. How many other lies had he been telling?

Zizu

It was after 10 o’ clock. Benedikte walked through the last part of Grünerløkka to a corner of another part of town, Sagene. She crossed over the inner ring-road and went along Vogts Gate, through the neighbourhoods of Torshov and Sandaker and up to Storo. The busy junction there was a jumble of tram lines, tarmac and paving stones, so Benedikte took the cycle path towards Grefsen Station, which for some reason had a window shaped like a Star of David. Then she walked under the outer ring road and up Kjelsåsveien. The walk made her more or less sober again, but she was still heading quite clearly towards Steinar’s house.

She wanted to laugh at
PDTV
, maybe show Steinar some of the highlights and ponder what might have happened to the tapes Bettina had spoken about, and what might have been on them.

She was also curious about how the relationship between Steinar and Taribo was developing, and whether he’d got any further with Stanley. Or had other agents joined the fight?

And then there was that business with the Astroturf. She couldn’t stop thinking about it. Some online research had given her further shocking relevations that she would have to investigate more closely. She needed help and wanted Steinar to be the one to help her. But most of all Bendikte had gone there from Bar Boca because she wanted to.

Her determined footsteps stopped two paces away from Steinar’s house in Lofthusveien. She looked through the kitchen window and found herself staring at Junior’s tear-stained face. Steinar was rocking him gently like a baby.

Junior raised his hand towards the window. Benedikte waved quickly and walked out of sight. The boy was clearly sick and needed his dad, she couldn’t just come barging in now.

She walked down Lofthusveien until she came to Skeid’s football pitch at Nordre Åsen. She went in through the black metal gate and over to the astroturf. She leaned against the fence and watched a couple of young lads knocking the ball to each other. One of the lads was tall, dark and West African. He was wearing rolled down socks, shorts that were far too long and a Barcelona top with the UNICEF logo on it. The other boy had lighter skin and was a little shorter, probably North African. The Barcelona boy called him ‘Zizu’, after Zinedine Zidane. He did resemble him, without a doubt. He was wearing a white football top with the number 5 on the back. They kicked the ball as it fell, giving it as much spin as possible. The organised matches and training sessions had finished for the day, but there was still enough light for a kickabout.

Benedikte stepped onto the synthetic grass which was hard, like green tarmac. Pieces had started to flake off the pitch, as if it had psoriasis.

One of the lads kicked the ball as hard as he could. It hit the crossbar, looped over the goal and bounced away. Zizu slapped his thigh and pointed at his friend, laughing at him for having to go and fetch the ball.

Benedikte took out her mobile and scrolled down through her contact list. She couldn’t deal with the Golden case seriously without following up on every bit of information, and maybe it was best to keep Steinar out of it, he might try to stop her. This could cost Benedikte her job after all.

She scrolled until she came to the number of the NFF’s facilities manager, Birger Holme.

Part 6

5 October 2009

Arild Golden stood in his office on the phone with Per Kristian Boltedal, the journalist from Dagens Næringsliv. He looked across the pitch at Ullevaal while trying to avoid answering Boltedal’s questions. Still, he also needed to find out what the journalist was getting at
.

‘We’ve heard rumours about money being passed under the table in a transfer deal involving a well-known Swedish keeper moving from a big-name Norwegian club to an even bigger-name English club. What can you tell me about that?’

‘No comment,’ said Golden. Snotty brat, he thought. Bloody punk journalist, with his ‘Swedish keeper, big-name Norwegian club, bigger-name English club’. If he was going to accuse Golden of something, he should do it properly and name names
.

Golden knew which transfer the journalist was alluding to, it had happened in a moment of pure Golden inspiration. He’d been at a match and was impressed by the keeper. At the same time, he saw a well-known English talent scout in the stands and sat down next to him
.

The English team didn’t really need a new keeper but the match was so terrible, and there were no other players near international standard, so the scout and Golden started negotiating
.

By midway through the first half they’d agreed on 600,000 pounds. Not as the transfer fee, but as the sum Golden would have to send so that enough people would persuade the club’s all-powerful manager that they needed a new keeper
.

40 minutes after the end of the match, Golden had his first meeting with the keeper. He hoped that the keeper would have an anonymous little agent or, even better, a humble brother or father taking care of business dealings, but no, he had one of Sweden’s biggest agents. Of course, having that agent wouldn’t stop the transfer, but it would cost Golden extra
.

‘We’ve spoken with a Nigerian agent who claims that you paid him to be an “on-paper” agent,’ said Boltedal
.

This was the first time Golden had used Chukwudi for a transfer. Chukwudi was resident in Norway but, since it’s the individual agent’s own national association that issues a licence, Chukwudi was subject to Nigerian rules. In terms of football, that meant 25-year-old players on the national under-17 team, all of whom were born on 1 January. The Nigerian association was even more lacking in scrutiny than the Norwegian one
.

Golden wouldn’t dare let the Swedish agent into the negotiating room, so he’d represent the keeper himself. The English team had their own agent, so Golden would need one more person to represent the Norwegian club
.

Still, Golden couldn’t quite understand why he’d given this job to Chukwudi. Africans were muscle. When playing football, they shouldn’t stand in goal or take penalties, and Golden couldn’t think of a single African economy that was in good health. A generalisation? Well then, thought Golden, show me a decent goalie, penalty taker or accountant from Africa
.

Of course it was an idiotic thing to do. Of course it was manna to the press. Why should this unknown Chukwudi represent the club in their biggest transfer ever? It was a good idea to use him to bring young Nigerians to Norway, but it had been madness to use him to represent a Norwegian club
.

The money had been siphoned off in too many directions. Golden Boys were left with just 3 million kroner. A big transfer, but a terrible payback. Was he really going to be grilled about such trivial deals?

Golden answered: ‘No comment.’

‘I’ll speak to you again soon,’ said Boltedal
.

Golden hung up
.