After another two minutes, the keeper on Steinar’s team took a long goal kick. The striker in front of Steinar ended up in a running duel with Elkjær. The Dane pulled away from the striker under pressure, but he was far too nonchalant when he had to find a teammate. His unsuccessful pass ended up at Steinar’s feet and the ball came to an immediate halt. Steinar’s first touch was working again. He’d stopped the ball without thinking about it, as if he’d never been away. Jambo saw the danger coming. Steinar was 30 yards from the goal. Jambo came towards him. Steinar pulled to the left. Jambo threw himself into tackle, but Steinar saw it coming and jumped over him. He took his shot from 25 yards, with the instep of his right foot. The ball spun and slammed into the top of the goal. Marius Bjartmann came in late and collided with Steinar. He turned round and saw the ball lying at the back of the net.
‘Played football before, have you?’ he said.
‘I suppose so,’ said Steinar, heading back to his own half of the pitch. It was a struggle not to smile. He wanted to turn his shirt inside out and run around like Junior had done.
Another kick-off. The game moved back and forth. Steinar got the ball in the same position, this time he was mown down. Jambo had seen they were in danger again and wasn’t going to miss his tackle a second time. Steinar landed on his back, knocking the breath out of him. It was unnecessarily hard but Steinar was mostly annoyed with himself, he’d reacted too late. He ignored Jambo’s niggling remarks and went on playing.
Another long ball from the keeper. This time Steinar got an elbow in the chest from Jambo. He felt his blood rush and the sweat stinging his eyes. The inside of his left thigh was aching where a muscle was torn, the meniscus on his right knee was hurting a little and he had cramp on both sides of of his lower back. Steinar felt alive again.
Jambo got the ball. He came towards Steinar, feigning left. Steinar realised it was a feint and stuck out his shoulder and a foot as a counterweight, and Jambo ran straight into Steinar’s shoulder. Jambo landed in the mud and leapt up with his fists clenched, but Elkjær took hold of him from behind and calmed him down. Bjartmann smiled at Steinar.
‘Maybe you should try not to provoke him too much,’ he said. ‘He might explode. Kalid’s an idiot, but he’s someone you want on your team. He’ll die for you when you’re on the same team and hate you if you’re wearing the other team’s colours. It makes no difference whether it’s a training session or a real match.’
Bjartmann was right. Every time Steinar had tried to get close to Diesen, Jambo had stopped him. It was his job to make sure Diesen could be the playmaker.
The second part of the match faded. It was still 1–1. Steinar was worn out. He wasn’t used to all these fits and starts. Running on the treadmill, cycling or skiing all involved monotonous motion and couldn’t be compared to the intensity of exercise on the football pitch. Steinar drank some more and saw the coach pointing his finger at Jambo and Diesen.
Halfway into the game’s third 15-minute ‘half’, Steinar moved up behind Diesen’s back. A short pass upfield. He pulled away, took the ball with the outside of his foot right in front of Diesen and dribbled back diagonally towards the touch-line. Then he turned quickly and kicked the ball between Diesen’s legs. The nutmeg was a bit too hard, and he had to sprint round Diesen to catch up with the ball, which was heading towards Jambo.
Jambo was coming for him with fury at a raging pace. Steinar managed to get his toe on the ball and knocked it through Jambo’s legs. Nutmeg number two. Steinar was now running straight for Elkjær, who was waiting for him. Big mistake. Steinar kept up his speed and switched the ball from right foot to left, a two-foot dribble round the outside of the Dane. Now Steinar was alone, facing the keeper. The same two-footed move and the keeper was also dealt with, but the ball was on its way off the pitch. Steinar caught up with it one yard from the goal line. He had an open goal. He caught a glimpse of Bjartmann sliding towards him out the corner of his eye. Steinar stroked the ball out the way. Bjartmann slid past and Steinar heard Bjartmann say ‘shit’ before Steinar rolled the ball into the open goal. Steinar was free again. For a few seconds, he thought about nothing. Absolutely nothing.
Then came the situation he’d been waiting for. Jambo lost the ball on his way forward. It was cleared by the centre-back from Steinar’s team, and it ended up with Diesen. Steinar timed his tackle perfectly. He caught both ball and man, sending Diesen tumbling to the ground. From where he lay, Steinar passed on the ball to Guðjónsson, who moved on quickly. Steinar grabbed Diesen’s wrist, pulled him up and said: ‘I know everything. I’ve got your pictures.’
First Goal in 10 Years
If the glossy magazines caught wind of where Benedikte had spent the night they would have a hard time choosing which story to put as the main spread. But all the journalists and photographers had gone now, they had no idea.
She sat down at her Mac. She wanted to gather as much background information as possible, as soon as they got some proof, she wanted to go on air and nail Per Diesen as Golden’s murderer.
Benedikte and Diesen were on nodding terms, but they hadn’t ever really spoken to each other. He was far too vain for Benedikte’s tastes, and the whole idea of metrosexual men annoyed her. There had to be some middle way, surely men weren’t just either dirty mechanics who threw girls on top of car bonnets or the type who shared everything, including their moisturiser.
She checked the main news websites. The biggest clubs worked extensively with these sites. It wasn’t because of Vålerenga’s work on integration that VG automatically published the stories from the club’s website. The aim was to increase the hits on the club’s website artificially, thereby getting a bigger percentage of the NFF’s media funding pot. This would then be split between VG and Vålerenga. It also saved VG having to pay journalists. It was a win-win situation, except in the case of the small clubs, who missed out on their slice of the media pie.
The main story everywhere was Steinar joining Vålerenga’s training session. Short video clips were published as the training session went on, and it came as some relief to her to see that Diesen was also playing. She would be safe where she was for the time being.
She reloaded VG’s football page. A large headline read: ‘Steinar Brunsvik’s first goal in 10 years.’ She followed the link to the short video clip and saw Steinar move past Kalid Jambo and hammer the ball into the net behind John Duff.
Benedikte had watched some archive footage from his time on the national team and at Ajax, but she thought this must be another Steinar. She watched the clip four times, it was a spectacular goal.
She clicked away from the sports pages and started looking at an online map. Vålerenga had been playing against Start in Kristiansand the day before she was attacked at Ullevaal. Diesen could have driven from Kristiansand to Oslo overnight. The team had gone there by bus, but Diesen and Bjartmann had probably stayed the night in Kristiansand so they could travel to Bergen for their appearance on TV2’s Football Xtra the day after. As a player with both Vålerenga and the Norwegian national side, Diesen would know Ullevaal like the back of his hand. It would’ve been a piece of cake for him to get hold of some keys.
From Oslo, Diesen would’ve had several options, but it was probably safest to drive from there to Bergen. Benedikte hadn’t seen him at Gardermoen Airport, and it was highly likely that somebody would have seen him there if he’d taken a later flight. A fan would at least have tweeted about it. The most likely scenario was that he’d driven over the hills himself. It was a six-hour drive, so he would still have been able to get to the studio just before 6 p.m. Maybe that was why the trio turned up so late, maybe Bjartmann and Sabrina had been waiting for him.
There were still several things she couldn’t work out. How did Diesen find out she was going to meet Birger Holme? How had he tricked Holme into thinking that she’d cancelled? And how could he have threatened TV2 to stop her from investigating?
Of course, no single player should have th
at much influence, but she was afraid it might be the case. If TV2 found it credible that Diesen could get other players from Vålerenga and the national team to refuse to be interviewed, it was possible that the channel might be willing to bury a story like this.
The doorbell rang, making Benedikte jump. It couldn’t be for her, she thought, as Junior ran towards the front door. She tried to grab him but missed. The boy dashed into the hallway and pressed his face against the window next to the door. It was hopeless to pretend there was nobody home. As she came into the hallway, Junior was reaching up as far as he could and just managed to turn the lock and open the door.
There stood Norway’s most wanted man, Taribo Shorunmo.
What Goes On in the Dressing Room…
Steinar was drying himself after taking a shower, keeping his eyes on Diesen the whole time. Then a piercing whistle cut through the room.
Into the dressing room came Otto Cana, a Kosovan Norwegian, together with the other two young lads who’d been fetching the balls. They tossed the ball-net towards Hjalmar Bakken, who checked that they’d collected them all. But Otto Cana had found something else too, he was holding a sports bottle above his head.
‘Marius, look! Kalid left his bottle on the pitch, that’ll be a fine!’
Every football team had its own internal justice system, often in the form of fines. The players agreed how much it would cost to turn up late for a match or training session, to wear sports clothing from a competing brand to the team’s sponsor, or to leave things out on the pitch. This encouraged them to grass on each other, and it was this, as well as the prospect of having to pay 50 kroner, that made Jambo snap. He leapt up and shouted at Cana.
‘I’m going to kill you!’
Jambo was the type of player who never admitted he was wrong. If he missed the ball the pass was too hard, if he hit a pass over the touchline, it was the other player’s mistake. He was famous all over Norway for being the only person who’d ever accused the ball of bouncing the wrong way on the indoor pitch at the Telenor Arena.
‘Marius, I swear, somebody hid my bottle, I looked for it everywhere. They must have covered it with grass.’
Kalid was addressing Bjartmann, just as Cana had done. Bjartmann was clearly in charge of issuing fines. He pulled out a small, black notepad from his washbag, opened it, breathing in as if he were smelling freshly baked bread, and started to write.
‘But…,’ said Kalid.
‘Kalidi Amin, you’ll have to go and bring it back into the dressing room, otherwise there’ll be a fine,’ said Bjartmann.
‘So it’s alright to hide other people’s bottles, is it?’
‘I don’t give a shit, you know the rules. Any appeals are to be lodged in writing.’
Bjartmann brought an end to the intercontinental discussion, but it went on over in Africa.
‘It’s always like this,’ Jambo said. ‘They look down on us foreigners. They never listen to us.’
‘I hear you, bro,’ said Cana.
‘Shut up, Otto, fucking grass, blabbing to the Norskies like that. What the fuck do you think you are, integrated?’
The language was different in Africa from Europe. In Africa they all called each other ‘bro’ or ‘asshole’, or both, usually as terms of endearment. They also swore a great deal and took things out on each other. There were 22 players in total in Vålerenga’s first-team stable, the nine players in Africa, making up a significant part of the team. There were three Moroccans, two Kosovans, a Russian, a Somali and a Nigerian, as well as Martin Hovdenakk, who was as white as a sheet but apparently had a ‘black way of thinking’.
Diesen sat down in his place next to Bjartmann. Bjartmann had a Brazilian flag above his clothes pegs.
Brazil, with its five world titles, was the best national team of all time. Almost all Brazilian international players came from poor backgrounds, with the famous exceptions of Kaká and Socrates. True, there weren’t exactly any favelas in Norway, but the national team would soon be dominated by players from the Grorud Valley and Holmlia, largely from less well-off families, and often from immigrant backgrounds. Would there soon be a class division in Norwegian football too?
Bjartmann pointed over at Africa, where they were still gesticulating as they discussed the bottlegate scandal, and shook his head. ‘I can’t believe they’re wasting so much energy on that bottle.’
Steinar’s mobile received a text. There were lots of conversations going on at the same time, loud outbursts too, but when his mobile beeped it caught everyone’s attention as if a gunshot had rung out.
‘Steinar doesn’t know the rules,’ said Bjartmann. ‘We’ll let him off a fine, just this once.’
Steinar put his mobile on silent before reading the message from Benedikte. Taribo and his brother Yakubu were on their way to pick him up. Benedikte had guessed there might be a few journalists there, so they would wait in the van by the side entrance.
The mood in the dressing room was still heated. Words such as ‘the Norskies’ and ‘grassing’ were thrown about, there was even lively discussion about how Steinar’s text message had been dealt with.
The only one of the Norskies who said anything back was Hjalmar Bakken: ‘Now just you calm down, you black buggers. Clean up all your tape instead.’
None of them answered back. It seemed they accepted Bakken.
The players put on their clothes, and the big iPod headphones they all wore in Africa. In Europe Diesen was wandering around humming a Coldplay song.
‘Tssss. He’s a poofter, you know,’ Kalid told Otto as they gave each other a slap on the back. They’d clearly put the grassing incident behind them.
Then Kalid picked up that day’s VG. The entertainment section had a big picture of Per Diesen and Sabrina from their appearance on Football Xtra. Jambo pointed at the picture and shouted.
‘Aren’t you going to sing for us then, Shawn Carter?’ Kalid laughed, giving several of the others high fives. ‘You could at least get Sabrina to come and dance for us.’ Still no reaction from Diesen. Kalid then got up and raised his voice even louder.
‘She danced for me first, you know,’ he said, stressing the word ‘danced’.
Kalid Jambo defended Diesen on the pitch, but here in the dressing room there were other social rules. Steinar saw Diesen’s eyes narrowing. Kalid lowered his voice, but was still clearly talking to his midfield partner:
‘Just say if she’s looking for a man, won’t you? Alright, little Per? Or is it Pervert?’
Diesen was Vålerenga’s captain that season. He’d been given the job because he was their best player, probably in the hope that it would make him even better, even more happy with the club and even more valuable if a transfer came along. But a captain was also supposed to be like the central reservation on a motorway. In a dressing room with very different opinions around, people from different religious and social backgrounds, different age groups, it was unavoidable that the traffic would sometimes be heading in opposite directions. A captain was supposed to help the manager to avoid any frontal collisions, and make sure the lads were all heading in the same direction when they had a match.
Diesen picked up a roll of red sock tape lying next to him and threw it with full force at Jambo. The tape slammed into the wall just a few inches from Kalid’s curly hair, and Kalid leapt across the room before the tape had hit the floor. Diesen leapt to his feet too.
Kalid shoved him. ‘You fucking homo!’
‘Oh, shut your trap for once, bloody couscous,’ said Diesen, before taking a right-hander to the stomach. Diesen paused for a couple of seconds before he hit back, wrestling Jambo to the ground. Diesen had surprising strength in his sinewy arms, but Jambo managed to get the upper hand and sat up on top of Diesen, ready to hit him again before he was lifted off. Bjartmann had seen enough. He pushed Jambo down to the ground and gave him two short jabs in the thigh.
‘Next time I’ll take your knees,’ he said.
Jambo kept quiet and, o
nce Bjartmann had finally let go, limped over to the physio and asked for an ice-bag.
What a bunch, thought Steinar. He finished changing and left the dressing room. Hjalmar Bakken was standing at the door to the kit room.
‘Heard a rumour that you did quite well,’ said Bakken.
‘It went alright.’
‘I’ve got an Adidas catalogue ready for you, just in case. I’ve underlined the items I’d recommend.’
Steinar took the catalogue, shook Bakken by the hand and walked briskly into the indoor sports hall, with its synthetic pitch.
‘Will we see you again?’ Bakken shouted, as loud as somebody with lung disease could.
Steinar pretended not to hear him and hurried across the astroturf. He went out the door on the other side and over to the waiting white van. Nobody saw him get in.
Stars
Benedikte looked through the main news websites once again. The VG site had added another story about Steinar under the headline ‘Steinar Brunsvik’s super solo goal’. She clicked on the link.
Had he really been that good? Or was it years of pent-up energy coming out all at once against a bunch of worn-out footballers who only saw that day’s training session as a chore?
Benedikte looked up from her MacBook and straight at Junior, whose face was straining, his head leaning forward but his eyes looking up at her. His lip was trembling. The smell confirmed her fear. The boy had done a poo.
She liked Junior, but she had to force a smile while she held her breath, took off his nappy, stuffed it down into the nappy bin, which was almost full, and took out the wet wipes. Junior was unable to stay still, and he wrinkled his nose when Benedikte grabbed tightly onto his ankles.
‘Sorry,’ said Benedikte, making her take a deep breath. The smell made her giddy, but she managed to control herself and stroked Junior on the cheek.
Exposed at the Back Page 23