Exposed at the Back (20 page)

Deep in the Forest

Steinar’s client had run off, Junior had chickenpox, and at the back of his head, Vlad Vidić was repeating those words: ‘You were never doped.’ Over and over again.

As if that wasn’t enough, now he had Benedikte staying for a platonic sleepover, not long after she’d said they should sleep together. Steinar looked back on their kissing episode with perspective now. He analysed his own behaviour and yet again concluded: Yes, he was an idiot.

He slowly rolled his bike down towards the supermarket, Rema 1000. He stopped outside the shop on Kjelsåsveien, parked his bike, went round the uneven corner to the entrance and took the three steps in a single leap.

He took some coffee and a packet of sweet
lefser
, a sugar-filled flatbread. He glanced at
VG
and
Dagbladet
on the newspaper stand next to the till, they each had a large picture of Taribo on the front page, with a smaller photo of Steinar himself. The headlines were ‘Fugitive’ and ‘On the run’. Steinar’s back pocket was constantly lit up by his mobile, in silent mode.

He paid, went out to his bike and put in the combination for the lock, then heard somebody shouting. He turned round and saw an old, white Volkswagen van. Sitting in the van was a dark-skinned man gesturing to him, leaning out the window. It was the man from the picture on the fridge.

‘I have important information for you,’ he said. ‘My name is Yakubu, I’m Taribo’s brother. He said a whole lot of other things too, but Steinar couldn’t understand everything. The man was speaking in African English at a furious speed, so Steinar asked him to slow down.

‘Sorry.
Jeg snakker ikke norsk
. I don’t speak Norwegian. I can understand a bit, but I prefer to English.’

‘That’s fine, just speak more slowly.’

‘You’ve got to come with me to see Taribo. He wants to talk with you.’

He bore a striking resemblance to Taribo, they were cast in the same enormous mould.

Steinar sighed. ‘Open the back so I can put in my bike.’

They spent the next few minutes chatting as Steinar managed to get to grips with Yakubu’s English. Steinar had some experience of African players’ pronunciation from the time he’d spent in the Netherlands. It was like when a Norwegian tried to understand Danish, if you tuned out the less clear parts and focused on the words that were stressed, you could work out the rest of the context. Now and then, Yakubu also pronounced the occasional word in a characteristically Norwegian accent. Steinar found himself having to interrupt less and less, while Yakubu went on speaking at pace.

‘I was in Stanley’s room while you were visiting him and his mum,’ he said. ‘I liked what I heard. I liked the fact that you were so open. It sounded like you meant it, not like that bastard Arild Golden. Did you know that he employed Taribo as a workman? Got him to redecorate his apartments. I’m paying attention more now, keeping an eye out. Both for Taribo and Stanley.’

They came to the Ryen junction, turned off south along Enebakkveien, drove past the Esso garage and through the neighbourhood of Abildsø. Steinar sent Benedikte a text message explaining the situation and asking if she could keep an eye on Junior a little longer. ‘Be careful,’ came the reply.

Yakubu continued. ‘They’re all bastards in Norwegian football. You know that guy from UDI, the Directorate of Immigration? The one who works with footballers?’

Steinar had no idea what Yakubu was talking about, let alone that there was somebody in the Directorate of Immigration dealing with footballers. He shook his head. Yakubu had used the Norwegian abbreviation for the Directorate of Immigration. UDI stood for
Utlendingsdirektoratet
, and he’d pronounced it in an especially Norwegian way: ‘Oo-deh-ee.’

‘Taribo and I know all the African footballers in southeast Norway. Whether they play for Lillestrøm, Pors, Stabæk or Ullern, we know them. We meet at African tournaments, both top players and cast-offs like us, and they’ve all run into that guy from UDI. He was Golden’s
inside man. He did whatever Golden told him to. If he wanted a player cleared, all he had to do was ask. Or he could have them stopped. If a club didn’t want to pay, he’d get the UDI man to write that the player was “
ikke nødvendig for klubbens virksomhet
”; surplus to requirements. If the club paid, the player would be cleared within a few days.’

Yakubu raced through that phrase in Norwegian, which seemed out of place against everything else he said in English. It was clearly a phrase he’d learnt by heart.

Could the extent of Golden’s corruption really reach as far as the Directorate of Immigration? Did he have a finger in every pie? Yakubu stopped the car in a car park and signalled Steinar to follow him.

‘How do you know so much about this?’ asked Steinar.

‘Golden gave me a good reason to look into it. He was once my agent too. Africa’s big, but the world of football is small. The biggest agents know where the biggest talent can be found. He promised me the world but left me in a hotel in Antwerp with no passport and no money. But God intervened and sent Taribo to me.’

Yakubu was confirming what Ola Bugge had told Benedikte, but why was he being so open? Did he think Steinar would protect them, even if they admitted guilt? Steinar had heard of the thousands of African lads who ended up as street prostitutes after football agents made money out of luring them to Europe, and he felt sorry for Yakubu if that’s what happened to him, but that didn’t give him a free pass to kill people.

They walked through a gate and along a tarmac road that soon became a gravel track. On their right was Rustadsaga, a large, red cabin where you could go for a bite to eat while walking or skiing in the woods. Yakubu led him up the track and into the forest, along the edge of Nøklevann, a small lake.

‘My dad has a small shop in Nigeria. One day, three men came and robbed him. A few hours later, my dad’s friends found them. My dad wanted to let them go once he got his money back, but his friends had other ideas. They cut the hands off one of them and made the second man drink fresh cement. Then they hammered a nail into the third man’s head. You don’t steal from a Nigerian.’

Steinar was familiar with the hilly terrain around Nøklevann, but a few hundred metres further on, they left the track and went through the woods, where there were no paths.

Yakubu led them further into the trees, constantly on the look-out.
Here was a man who was used to danger. Perhaps a man who was used to violence too. He had a scar on his face, was it from a knife fight? A fight to the death? What did Steinar know, other than the fact that Yakubu was leading him to Norway’s most wanted man?

There were no bikes braking or children crying in their pushchairs, it was so unusual not to have the constant sound of traffic in the background. A bird, something rustling in a bush, a gust of wind taking hold of a birch tree, they were only the sounds until they heard a shout.

‘Hot dog to start with?’

Taribo Shorumno was holding out a hot dog to Steinar. Behind him, hidden among the trees, Taribo had put up a tent. Inside the tent, Steinar could see a couple of bags of clothes, a portable radio, some newspapers and a paperback lying open upside down. On the large grill there were three chops cooking, some spare ribs and more sausages. Taribo had clearly planned his escape and had assistance. Steinar took the hot dog, sat down on the nearest rock and took a couple of bites before he said anything.

‘What’s going on, Taribo?’ he asked.

The man whose face was on every newspaper, website and news programme flipped one of the pieces of meat and said: ‘I saw a chance and took it. All I really had to do was walk out, and why not? My life’s over as it is.’

‘It’s not. You’ve got to let me fight for you in court.’

‘I’ll be thrown out of the country even if I’m found innocent. I want to be close to my son.’

‘They’ll catch you if you meet him.’

‘I’ll have to see him in secret, but it’s better than nothing.’

‘Why am I here?’

‘I still want you to be his agent. You’re the only one who can protect him. Yakubu will also have to go into hiding now, he hasn’t got a residence permit either.’

‘Where are you going to live?’

‘We’ll stay here for now.’

‘Why here?’

‘Have you ever seen a black man in the forest here in Oslo? It’s the last place they’ll look.’

Steinar wiped off some barbecue sauce from the corner of his mouth. ‘Why didn’t you tell me about Golden and that business with Stanley’s injections?’

‘Because Golden said that such large quantities of cortisone might give a positive result in a doping test, so it was best to keep quiet,’ said Taribo.

Steinar nodded, then he turned to Yakubu.

‘Drive me back,’ he said.

Steinar needed to think things through, work out how something like this could’ve happened, agents putting young boys’ lives at risk. How could the world of football have become so dirty? But first he had to ask Taribo a couple of questions.

‘Do you own a morning star?’

Taribo held Steinar’s gaze but didn’t answer. How much should Steinar push him out here in the wildnerness? He got up and started walking off with Yakubu. Then he turned towards Taribo one last time.

‘By the way, do you remember that day whether or not the window in Golden’s office was open?’

Back-Up

The sight of Junior sleeping had calmed her nerves, the rhythm of his breathing and his chest rising and falling. She wiped away a spot of crust from the corner of his eye.

Benedikte wasn’t used to children, and she didn’t know how much they could take without being woken. Carefully she pressed her finger against his chin. His head just drifted to the side. She lifted his arm. It was as if it had no muscles in it. The cartoon on the computer had long since finished.

She couldn’t put it off any longer. She went into the kitchen, closed the door and dialled Ola Bugge’s number. He answered on the third ring.

‘Hi, it’s Benedikte Blystad.’

‘Hey baby, sorry it took me a while to answer, I had John Santio on the other line.’

Santio was one of the big international agents, and it was beyond Benedikte how on earth Bugge would know him. True, Bugge had been making the most of the void left by Golden over the past few days, signing dozens of his players, but Santio was in another league altogether. Santio was behind the really big transfers, the ones between Manchester United and Real Madrid, Inter and Barcelona.

‘What can I do for you, my lovely little lady?’ said Bugge.

‘I want to meet you.’

‘Didn’t get enough of me last time, eh? Need a bit more “buggie wuggie”? I get you.’

‘I’ve got a proposal for you,’ she said.

‘No problem, where should we meet?’

‘Do you know St Halvard’s?’ asked Benedikte. The pub, in the old part of Oslo’s East End, was just shady enough that nobody noticed
who the other patrons were.

‘No, no, baby, I’m done with places like that. I’m a respectable businessman now. Let’s make it the roof bar at the Grims Grenka Hotel, 8 p.m.,’ he said, hanging up.

Benedikte went back into the living room. Junior rolled over but didn’t wake up. He wasn’t seriously ill, but still, anything could happen, even with a child.

Her cancer had made Benedikte tough, but it also made her a cautious and thorough person. You couldn’t take cytotoxic medication lightly. She couldn’t fight the superior force of cancer all on her own. She’d taught herself to live life to the full, but when that life was under threat, she reverted to being that careful little child.

She was always afraid there were cells smouldering away, cells that came back to life and multiplied. The doctors had reassured her that wasn’t going to happen, she’d been cured, but Benedikte knew that children who’d had leukaemia had an increased risk of cancer later in life. The risk was small, but she still insisted on regular check-ups. She didn’t want to give cancer any extra chances, no advantage.

Similarly, she couldn’t physically take on a large, strong man, so she didn’t want to turn up at a popular place like the Grims Grenka Hotel to question Bugge without having someone in her corner. She’d wanted it to be Steinar, but not now, not while Junior was ill. She stroked the boy’s head, went back into the kitchen and called her ex-boyfriend in the police, Arnold Nesje. She made it sound as if it wasn’t anything special.

‘Got any plans for this evening?’

Champions League

Steinar got out of Yakubu’s car at the junction of Oslo Gate and Bispegata. Yakubu spun off while Steinar was heading to the back of the van to get his bike. He called after him, but Yakubu was already out of reach.

He took out his mobile and sent Benedikte a text message: ‘How’s it going?’

The reply came quickly: ‘Fine. Junior’s still asleep.’

‘Is it OK if I go to a quick meeting?’

‘Sure.’

‘I’ll be home ASAP.’

He walked past the medieval city ruins and the Ruinen pub. Steinar had his doubts about whether the name, which literally meant ‘the ruin’, was a good choice for such an establishment.

He walked down the slope, passing under the last stretch of railway before Oslo Central Station. The passageway reminded Steinar of Brooklyn, where he and Mette had gone on a break while they were law students. The landscape opened up with the big park in front of the prison and police station. Steinar walked up the path and through the door, together with four young people on their way to renew their passports. They were discussing an InterRail trip. Steinar went over to reception and asked to see Inspector Håvard Lange. A couple of minutes later, he found himself sitting in Lange’s office.

‘Of course we thought about that,’ said Lange after Steinar had told him his theory about the window. ‘But we also know that anybody climbing in there would most probably have been sighted.’

‘Why?’

‘Vålerenga were having a training session that evening, and they would’ve noticed if somebody was climbing in through a window up
there.’ Lange tidied some papers on his desk.

‘What are you saying? Vålerenga were training at Ullevaal that day? They normally train at Valle.’

‘Vålerenga had a Champions League qualifier, so they were doing some extra training sessions.’

‘But that means there were a number of other potential killers in the immediate area of the crime scene.’

‘We’ve got our man. Taribo fits the crime in every way. He’s recorded as entering the door. We seized a morning star at his home, which we presume to be the murder weapon. Taribo’s in Norway illegally and, when we questioned him, he admitted having an argument with Golden. Besides, he’s escaped. I’m certainly not interested in investigating whether anybody else might have had a motive or opportunity.’

Lange could say whatever he wanted, but it was incredible that the police had leapfrogged over the fact that Vålerenga had been training at Ullevaal that evening, no matter how guilty Taribo might seem.

‘Have you got any details of who was there at the training session?’

‘Not exactly, but it’s probably easy to work out. 20 players, some coaches, maybe a few people watching. Agents and some fans.’ Lange drew some imaginary circles in the air.

‘That morning star, have you got it here at the station?’

‘It’s in the evidence room.’

‘Would it be possible to see it?’

Lange looked at Steinar for a few seconds before lifting the phone and calling the person in charge of the evidence room. Minutes later the weapon was brought up to them. Lange passed it to Steinar. One blow from that would surely be enough to kill somebody.

‘Golden had holes in the back of his neck, about a centimetre deep, which could have been made with a weapon like this. Is that right?’ asked Steinar.

‘That’s the theory we’re working on.’

‘But you’re not sure that a morning star was used?’

‘That’s right. We’ve got to wait for the post mortem report before we draw any conclusions.’

Steinar ran his fingers over the sharp spikes. His eyes moved from the weapon to Lange.

‘It wasn’t a morning star that killed Arild Golden,’ Steinar said.