Exposed at the Back

by Arild Stavrum

  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?’r />
  ‘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.’