Exposed at the Back

by Arild Stavrum

  Sabrina’s real name was Ida Therese Hauge, but her almost Latin looks, as well as her frequent visits to the best plastic surgeons in town, made the name Sabrina much more practical. She’d borrowed her name from the 1980s Italian star who’d had a hit with ‘Boys’, along with several other songs that reached the top three in Finland.

  There was a regular feature in PDTV in which Sabrina sat alone in the bedroom, revealing small secrets about herself, Per Diesen, their relationship and life in general. In one recent episode Sabrina revealed that ‘Boys’ was her favourite song as a little girl.

  As an agent, Golden had mainly stuck to representing footballers. Sabrina was an exception. Benedikte had spoken to several media editors, and Golden had promoted Sabrina on a grand scale. Golden himself had once been a model in a couple of advertising campaigns and knew people in every nook and cranny of the Norwegian media. The result was that Sabrina made appearances in four episodes of Paradise Hotel on TV3 and had two half-page spreads between the front and centre pages of lads’ mags Vi Menn and FHM, before she was ready for her big breakthrough on the Norwegian edition of Strictly Come Dancing, TV2’s Skal Vi Danse?

  Sabrina fell in her paso doble and was the first participant to be sent home, but straight after her tearful post-show interview, Golden showed up and introduced Sabrina to Diesen, sending rumours flying as early as that same evening’s transmission of the entertainment programme God Kveld Norge. VG printed some grainy pictures in its Sunday edition (and the very same ones on Monday). By Tuesday the glossy magazine Se og Hør was exclusively able to confirm that Diesen had comforted Sabrina at the Beach Club diner, then on Wednesday the violinist Gudmund Eide overstepped in training, so Sabrina was back ballroom dancing by Thursday.

  At Christmas, Sabrina was in the final, up against the news anchor Kåre Jan Vasshaug. She was a frisky eye-catcher who couldn’t dance, while he was a professional presenter who was TV-savvy enough to hold a microphone, but couldn’t dance either. Vasshaug didn’t stand a chance. The circus around Sabrina and Diesen had become so huge that she won with a massive 85 per cent of the vote. The camera managed to pick up the tiniest of tears from Diesen, which became the subject of an entire episode of PDTV, with the pair sitting together on the sofa watching a repeat of the tear, which, in turn, led to further tears. From both of them.

  A towering African man stood at the bar, a short distance away from Benedikte. She recognised him from a couple of newspaper articles as Chukwudi, an agent Golden had worked with.

  Benedikte had checked the archives after speaking to Boltedal from the Dagens Næringsliv. Before Golden’s death, TV2 had been working on uncovering some dubious sides of his business dealings, with a particular focus on Africa. Golden had also begun pocketing training compensation, solidarity payments and future transfer rights, all things that represented real opportunities for the small clubs in the big world of football.

  This was done by giving the African club, which was often a somewhat diffuse academy, a small sum in exchange for them waiving any rights to future payments. The sum might be between 1,500 and 8,000 dollars. A lot of money in some parts of Africa, but peanuts when transfer fees might be in the tens of millions, and when the academy or club was formally entitled to 5 per cent.

  In some cases these contracts were signed by people who couldn’t read. In other cases, the money vanished after direct threats were made, money that, by rights, should have gone back to Africa. At least, that was the idea when FIFA laid out the rules. Benedikte noticed the man looking at her as she shifted her weight from one leg to the other.

  Under the chestnut tree by the entrance, with the best view of the stage, sat Per Diesen with his teammate and best friend, Marius Bjartmann, on a grey rattan sofa. Benedikte had heard the organiser asking if they’d like to perform their radio hit ‘Bleed for the Team’. The pair had turned down the offer.

  Bjartmann had made his mark late as a footballer. He’d never played in a national youth side. Actually, to tell the truth, he’d never even been close to making his regional team. Bjartmann was one of those footballers who had to become a first-team player before managers saw their real worth. Bjartmann was no prolific dribbler; he was a defender. The kind of footballer who shouldn’t get the ball at all. A footballer who was only good at getting in the way. ‘Red Marius’ was his nickname, playing on both the colour of his hair and all the times he’d been sent off over the years.

  He was a perfect foil and partner for Diesen. They were very different, and the complexity of their partnership caught the public imagination. They appeared as guests on late-night talk shows and breakfast shows. They turned up at fashion shows, film premieres and restaurant openings. They were everywhere. When their single, written by that year’s main X Factor judge, Jørn Engen, reached number one in the charts, the gossip reached fever-pitch among opposing teams’ supporters. This dynamic duo was the gayest thing in football since Elton John became chairman at Watford. Golden wasn’t so keen on that. There were no indications that big sports brands like Adidas or Nike were planning on using homosexuality in their advertising campaigns. It would be a good idea to get Diesen and Sabrina to hook up.

  Diesen stood up and went to the bar, waving modestly to Benedikte, who noticed that he was unusually good-looking at close quarters. Diesen was about to order when Sabrina cleared her throat and spoke into the microphone.

  ‘I want to dedicate this song to my good friend Arild Golden. I think it’s fitting for this sad occasion.’ Sabrina closed her eyes, having timed her introduction perfectly with the playback, and let the first lines of the Monroes’ classic ‘Cheerio’ drift out over the assembled audience and down the hillside to the seemingly permanent building site at Bjørvika, while she mimed along with just the right amount of sensuality. ‘Cheerio, cheerio, bye-bye, cheerio-o, it’s too late to try.’

  Benedikte just hoped that the line ‘I will never know the reason why’ was not the one that would stick.

  After the song, Diesen ordered drinks from the bar. The bartender mixed them but refused to take any money. Diesen went back to his table. He put one of the glasses down in front of Bjartmann and held up the other as a kind of toast.

  ‘What the hell are you doing, bringing us two cosmos? Holding the glasses by the stem?’ said Bjartmann, far too loudly. He looked round at the neighbouring tables, realising that the scene he was making wasn’t appropriate, and gave Diesen a sign to sit down. Bjartmann leant forward and carried on whispering as he gesticulated wildly.

  Somebody tapped Benedikte on the shoulder. She turned around. It was a journalist, whose name she couldn’t remember, from Se og Hør.

  ‘Have you heard the latest rumours?’

  ‘That they’re gay?’ asked Benedikte.

  ‘No, that’s a load of rubbish, of course they’re not gay, but apparently they’ve fallen out. Arild Golden, Per Diesen and Marius Bjartmann were pals. At least until Golden started fooling around with Sabrina. Pretty ironic.’

  ‘Why ironic?’

  ‘Well, Golden added a clause in the contract for Diesen’s online show that Diesen and Sabrina wouldn’t have sex on camera, because that would harm Diesen’s chances as a professional footballer abroad. And then Golden goes ploughing her instead.’

  ‘But why did Bjartmann get so angry?’

  ‘Don’t know. Maybe he thinks it’s pathetic of Diesen to let the girl sing here, in honour of the man who she slept with. Best friends tell each other these things, after all.’

  ‘Are you going to write about this?’

  ‘I’ve got no concrete evidence, just a colleague who saw Golden leaving Diesen and Sabrina’s flat while Vålerenga were training. Not enough to write about when we’re talking about dead people, but I know it happened. Golden was shagging Sabrina.’

  Offside

  Steinar realised that he was wearing the wrong clothes as soon as he entered the TV2 building. Out on Karl Johans Gate, the main street in Oslo, anything goes. In a way it was diffic
ult not to be well dressed next to heroin addicts, prostitutes and tourists from Trondheim.

  The whiteness of the reception desk was blinding, as were the backs of the computer screens, as were the receptionist’s teeth. On the desk was a red bowl of sweets wrapped in white. The flat-screen TVs on the wall were showing the company’s news channel, TV2 Nyhetskanalen. Steinar turned round and hurried out across the street to the first clothes shop he saw.

  10 minutes later he was back in the reception, wearing new jeans and a dark blue piqué shirt, which he double-checked to make sure all the price tags had been removed.

  ‘I’ve got an appointment to see Benedikte Blystad,’ he told the Sensodyne man, who picked up the phone and passed on Steinar’s message.

  ‘Somebody will be down to fetch you. Take a seat for a moment.’ He pointed at the red leather bench. Steinar had just turned to the second page of Dagens Næringsliv when a young man came up to him.

  ‘Are you Steinar Brunsvik?’

  Steinar nodded.

  ‘Follow me, please,’ said the man, leading Steinar over to the lift.

  The doors opened into a large office area where a multitude of computers were ready to be used. The office was waiting for news. Steinar hoped the news wouldn’t be him.

  He was led past the small studio used by the news channel and along a corridor filled with workstations. There she was, leaning on a colleague’s desk and resting on her left elbow while she pointed at something on the computer screen. Steinar couldn’t help letting out the tiniest of sighs.

  ‘I know, I know,’ said the man who’d accompanied Steinar.

  Benedikte spotted Steinar and came towards him.

  ‘Come with me,’ she said.

  She led Steinar straight to a room at the back, a small meeting room simply furnished with a table and a laptop in the middle. He turned down an offer of coffee, but said yes to some mineral water, and sat down.

  ‘Wondering about the way I contacted you, maybe?’ asked Benedikte.

  Steinar was becoming aware of the crease in his shirt, the one going across his stomach, as the shirt had come straight from the packet. He hadn’t seen it in the shop, so now he tried to straighten it discreetly. He poured himself a glass of the mineral water, took a long sip and nodded.

  ‘I’ve been working a fair amount on the Golden case over the last few days, and while I’ve been sitting here doing research, I started thinking of you. I put your name into an archival search together with Arild Golden’s, and I found the raw footage for a planned investigation programme.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘It was a documentary about Arild Golden that was never finished, but I thought we could watch what’s there,’ said Benedikte. She turned off the light and pressed ‘Play’.

  Steinar saw a short summary of his own career: his years at Årvoll, being coached by Ståle Jakobsen, goals in the Amsterdam Arena, and then VG’s front page headline: ‘HUNG UP HIS BOOTS AT HALF-TIME.’ There then followed speculation about Steinar’s relationship with Arild Golden, but the main topic of the documentary was Golden’s vast finances and how Golden Boys had used dirty tricks to try and take the same kind of control over the African market as it had in the Nordic market. Steinar felt his stomach in knots, uncertain of what was to come, but he was really just on the margins of the story as one of many Norwegian pros who’d gone abroad and come up against a wall. Then Steinar saw Vlad Vidić in the background again. Perhaps Benedikte saw his reaction. She stopped the video and pointed.

  ‘Do you know who this man is?’

  ‘No,’ said Steinar.

  Had he answered too quickly? It was true, anyway, Steinar really didn’t know who the man was. He only knew what he was good for.

  They watched the rest of the footage in silence. If Benedikte and TV2 didn’t know who Vlad Vidić was, with all their resources, how was he supposed to find out?

  The documentary finished and Benedikte switched off the computer.

  ‘Are these claims true, that Golden was your agent, and that he cheated you out of money?’

  ‘I didn’t have an agent. I used my coach from Årvoll, Ståle Jakobsen, who we just saw on the video, and negotiated together with him.’

  ‘I thought you had to have an agent?’

  ‘Not back then. It’s a new requirement that’s been introduced for some reason.’

  ‘Why did you quit?’ asked Benedikte.

  ‘Why didn’t they finish the documentary?’ Steinar retorted.

  ‘It was stopped after the scandal surrounding the documentary on the national skiing team. That one had gone to great lengths to accuse Norwegian skiing of being bottom of the class when it came to doping, but then it turned out that the evidence didn’t hold up. TV2 didn’t have the energy for another story about sports personalities straight away. It was too much trouble.’

  ‘Why didn’t the evidence hold up?’

  ‘I don’t know the details,’ said Benedikte. ‘We Norwegians are best in the world at double standards in terms of sport. If a Finnish skier wins, she’s got to be doping, but we wouldn’t hesitate to let the same skier take up Norwegian citizenship and let her puff on asthma medicine at 2,000 metres above sea level if it gave us a Norwegian relay victory or a European handball gold medal. It’s career suicide to criticise these things. Imagine if star skiers like Petter Northug or Marit Bjørgen were exposed as dopers. If we wanted to show something about that, we’d need a video of them injecting themselves and we’d need a Supreme Court judge acting as cameraman.’

  Steinar looked at his watch. It was almost 2 o’clock. He was relieved that the documentary had never been finished, but it was also nearly seven hours since he’d eaten breakfast.

  ‘Why did you quit?’ Benedikte asked again.

  ‘Can’t we get something to eat?’ asked Steinar. He looked at Benedikte. She was strikingly beautiful. Part of him wanted to disclose everything to her, but she was asking about his closest secret. And he didn’t know her well enough. Not yet.

  Steinar let Benedikte choose a place, so she took him down to the Baltazar Restaurant. Shadows lay on the red bricks on the ground and across the walls outside the entrance to the restaurant behind Oslo Cathedral. It was an enjoyable place to eat outdoors, but Steinar insisted that they sit inside, where the dark interior meant Steinar could let his shirt hang freely. Benedikte also relaxed for a moment, or so it seemed. Steinar looked at a wine bottle up on a shelf. They’d used it as a candle holder, and white wax had congealed on the label. They ordered one without wax.

  The waiter asked who would like to taste the wine, and gestures were exchanged back and forth across the table until Steinar had to pretend that he understood this business of sniffing it and letting it roll around his mouth. After what he hoped was a long enough pause, he signalled to the waiter to pour and took control of the conversation before Benedikte had a chance to.

  ‘How did you get started at TV2?’ he asked, taking another sip of wine. Benedikte looked at him for a few seconds before speaking.

  ‘You know how some people irritate you from the very first moment you meet them?’ she asked.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Well, there were a couple of girls who used to come into the petrol station where I worked for a while. They came to buy baby food. You know, those small jars of mashed up lasagne. These girls didn’t have children, they just lived on baby food, and every day they stood there talking about some brain-dead rubbish. One day, I overheard them talking about a vacancy they’d seen for breakfast TV editorial staff on God Morgen Norge, and they were saying how cool it would be to work there and meet all the celebrities.’

  ‘Baby food?’

  ‘I think they thought it was healthy. Anyway, that’s not the point. After hearing their conversation, I went in to see the boss, handed in my uniform and took the tram into town. I showed up at the TV2 offices and asked about the job vacancy, which it turned out wasn’t vacant after all. But I refused to leave and they eventually let me
do a trial shift as a studio runner.’

  ‘What’s that?’

  ‘Someone who chats, serves coffee, makes sure people are miked up and takes the guests down to the studio at the right moment. Then off with the microphones once their pieces are done, and into a taxi they go. I got fed up after a while, started saying things I shouldn’t have.’

  ‘Like what?’

  ‘A studio runner’s supposed to reassure the guests. Make sure they perform, to use the sports jargon. But I started saying things that put them off. Have you seen that classic advert for the business school?’

  ‘I’m not sure.’

  ‘The one where there are people being made to feel nervous and out of their depth, who say “erm” before being reduced to their underwear by a puff of wind. It became my ambition to do that to people. Sometimes I was vicious. “Mind that step, a few people have broken a bone on that one.” I said that to the new leader of the Pensioners’ Association, who was already nervous. I once put off the prime minister so much that he offered me an internship.’

  ‘So you turned down the prime minister?’

  ‘I took time to think about it, and while I was thinking, along came Bertil Olsen.’

  ‘Who’s that?’

  ‘The chief editor of TV2 Sports Review, but also the most frequently used handball expert on the breakfast show. He didn’t turn up at the arranged time. I phoned him, waking him up at his hotel, then managed to rearrange the transmission schedule and organise things so that he could be on air before the 8 o’ clock news bulletin. I think he was having a few problems with his boss at that time, and he was grateful I sorted it out for him. So grateful that he gave me the chance to be a reporter on Sports Review.’

  ‘How come?’

  ‘Between you and me, being a blonde woman is quite an advantage when you’ve got to interview male sports personalities,’ said Benedikte, making a movement with her right ankle. Steinar noticed her ankles were bare above a pair of spotted pink and black high-heel sandals.