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to a camp closed to other agents that they themselves had licensed. They gave Golden a monopoly. Golden filtered out the best talent in Norway and got to know the boys and their families. That’s how he got control of Stanley.’
    Benedikte nodded as she thought about it. It seemed incredible that the NFF, Norway’s largest single-sport association, could allow itself to be so manipulated by a single agent, and that they let one agent take control of the country’s best 14-year-olds. 14-year-olds who would soon be 16 and would go on to international academies with Golden Boys owning their rights.
    ‘You just said now that the state of the market has become a lot less clear since Golden’s death. Why? Did Golden have partners?’ asked Benedikte.
    ‘He might have done, but the contracts are tied to each agent individually, not to companies, so many of Norway’s most attractive players are unrepresented now. There’s a power vacuum, and the transfer market opened yesterday.’
    Benedikte thought about Stanley. He was a potential international star. Norway’s Zlatan. Almost 15, which was a golden age, foreign clubscouldn’t sign players then, but agents could. And surely Golden Boys wouldn’t just want to let him go? They had a verbal agreement with his family, after all. Or did they? It struck Benedikte that Golden had been such a visible front man for his agency that she didn’t know whether he had any other employees. Benedikte’s thoughts were interrupted by Sennikov.
    ‘Football’s not like it used to be,’ he said. ‘Now we’ve got superstars at lower secondary school and first-team players who are reality stars. I don’t know how they manage to keep focused.’ He shook his head slowly while dipping his fingers into a box of snus tobacco, digging out an improbably large pinch and manoeuvring it into position under his lip in a masterly fashion.
    ‘Has the club got involved in this?’ asked Benedikte.
    ‘It’s hard to have an overall policy. It’s so new for us to see our players broadcasting from their own flats. We have to deal with it on a case-by-case basis, but it’s no secret that we had meetings with Golden to make sure that Per stayed focused on his football.’
    ‘How did that go?’
    ‘Golden made some good arguments, Per was performing better than ever, after all. Vålerenga wanted to maintain good relations with Golden too, so perhaps we weren’t as critical as we should’ve been.’
    ‘Didn’t Golden have a point, though? Diesen is at the top of the fantasy football stats in most newspapers, and not just in VG , which is probably giving him high marks to promote their PDTV series anyway.’
    ‘That’s just it. The club let it lie, as long as he kept on playing well, but where should we draw the line? Reality TV’s fine, but what about porn? Is that okay as long as they score on the pitch too?’
    Benedikte started fidgeting with something in her pocket in the somewhat uncomfortable pause that followed. It was the business card she’d been given by that portly football agent she’d met at Nordre Åsen. She fired a shot in the dark.
    ‘What about Ola Bugge? Do you know him?’ she asked.
    ‘Bugge, yes. He’s different,’ said Sennikov.
    ‘In what way?’
    ‘Golden had the ones with the very best talent, while the fairish ones were swept up by other agents. Bugge started something completely different, he signed Oslo’s worst footballers.’
    ‘That doesn’t sound like much of a business plan,’ said Benedikte.
    ‘Players were queuing up. He had the ones who’d played on thesecond-best youth team at Kjelsås, the ones who’d turned 28 and still thought that Real Madrid had their eyes on them, the ones who were in their third year playing for Bjølsen and thought that they deserved a contract they could live on, or even that they could live well on. These were players who weren’t paid by their clubs, in some cases players who didn’t even have a club, who