The Morning Star

by Karl Ove Knausgaard

I closed the door, got into bed and shut my eyes. I was sure he was in the house somewhere. I’d have heard him go out if he wasn’t.

  Unless it had all been in my head?

  I sat up.

  Like the fire?

  It wasn’t possible. It couldn’t be.

  Everything had been so real. He’d been hammering on the door, shouting his head off. I’d gone down and let him in, and he’d shoved me out of the way and run up the stairs. I’d gone into his room. He’d thrown himself back against the wall and had been scared to death of me.

  My brain couldn’t possibly have made it all up.

  So where was he now?

  I went to the window, put my hands down flat on the sill and leaned out. The sky above the fells had grown lighter, the stars had paled and were now barely visible at all. Only not the new one. The new one shone, bright and clear.

  JOSTEIN

  I might not have been the happiest man in the world as I closed the door behind me and hurried along the corridor to the elevator, but it wasn’t far off. A triple murder wasn’t exactly an everyday occurrence. And if Geir was saying it was the most horrific thing he’d seen, it had to be bad. A serial killer on the loose in the city, it didn’t get much better than that. What’s more, it gave me an alibi in case Turid happened to ask. How was she to know what time I’d been called out? And for all I knew, that little artist piece in the room back there might even be sticking around another day yet. I could pop back and check once I’d got the article done.

  Coming down into reception, I was somehow expecting it to be winter, snow piled up in drifts against the buildings, a black sky full of whirling snowflakes. Only it wasn’t. It was summer and hot as hell. The air outside was like walking into a wall, anyone would have thought it was the middle of the day.

  The taxi rank was deserted, not a cab in sight. I lit a cig and typed the address into the app. For destination I put Svartediket, but deleted it again thinking no one in their right mind was going to take me up there at this time of night. Instead, I looked the place up on Google Maps to see what roads led up there. The junction of Svartediksveien and Stemmeveien looked all right.

  Six minutes away, it said.

  I stood and watched as the little black car icon turned round on the map and headed toward the center of town.

  Torgallmenningen lay empty and desolate in front of me. From one of the top-floor apartments, some music blared all of a sudden. I looked up and saw three people step out onto a balcony, each with a bottle in their hand.

  Butchered, he’d said.

  And killed with what? A slaughter knife? Or maybe a good old-fashioned ax?

  Skinned, too.

  That was extreme.

  Why had he done it?

  Or why had they? There’d been four lads in that band. That meant there could be more than one killer. But didn’t he say only three had been killed? So where was the fourth?

  The fourth one had killed the others. And they hadn’t got him, he was still out there. Maybe down here in town now, with me standing about.

  The taxi was on its way through the tunnel. I flicked my cig end onto the sidewalk and went toward the road where he’d soon come into view.

  The birds had already started twittering in the trees above me. Cheep-cheep, you fat creep. Cheep-cheep, and no sleep. Wasn’t that what they were saying?

  I didn’t notice him until then, but there was a man standing back against the wall on the other side of the road, staring at me. Or staring at something. He was probably just a drunk standing gawking while he tried to find the strength to walk the last bit of the way home.

  I looked up the road in the direction I was expecting the taxi to come from. There wasn’t a car in sight, so I opened the map to check. It told me he’d pulled up outside the Hotel Norge.

  I looked around.

  Those maps weren’t always that exact.

  No taxi anywhere.

  You could phone them directly now, couldn’t you?

  There was a phone icon, anyway. I tapped it and put the mobile to my ear, pacing back and forth impatiently now. They were up there with their bodies gathering their crime-scene evidence, and it wouldn’t be long before other reporters got wind either.

  The phone kept ringing.

  Eventually, I gave up and went back into the hotel. There was no one on reception. I hit the bell hard with the flat of my hand.

  A lanky beanstalk of a man in a black suit that was too big for him came out from the back and looked at me all superior, though he was the one with the horsey teeth and pockmarks in his cheeks.

  “How can I help you, sir?” he said.

  “Can you get me a taxi?” I said. “I’ve tried, but no luck.”

  “Are you a guest of the hotel, sir?”

  Just order the cab, you damn tool.

  I shook my head.

  “I’m a guest of someone who is,” I said.

  Been upstairs for a fuck, he most likely thought. But what did I care? He nodded and pressed the button, then handed me a slip with an order number on it.

  I went back outside.

  If only it would get a move on. It was eating me up, hanging around knowing what was going on out there.

  I lit another cig.

  No one could deny me anything if I was first on the case.

  Three bodies in the woods, butchered and skinned, and one journalist.

  Come on!

  “You must be impatient,” a voice said behind me.

  What?

  I spun round. It was the guy who’d been staring at me. I’d thought he was somewhere in his twenties, only now I could see he was forty at least, if not fifty.

  “Are you talking to me?” I said.

  All he did was smile. He didn’t look drunk at all. So what did he want? Was he a homo, or what?

  “Yes,” he said. “There’s no one else here.”

  “You could be a lunatic talking to yourself,” I said. “You look a bit like one too, frankly.”

  He put his hand on my shoulder.

  “What the hell do you think you’re doing?” I said, and twisted away. Just then, the taxi pulled up and I stepped resolutely toward it, opened the door and got in the back, shaking my head in disbelief at the guy.

  “Did you order?” the driver said without turning round.

  “Yes,” I said, and waved the note at him.

  “Svartediksveien?”

  “That’s right. And damn sharpish too. If you get a move on, I’ll make it worth your while.”

  The homo was still standing there smiling at me. As the driver swung the car round and pulled away again, he lifted his hand in a wave, as if we were friends now.

  Fucking idiot.

  I was going to give him the finger, only then I thought maybe it meant something completely different in the homo world, so I looked away instead.

  “Live out there, do you?” said the driver, and glanced at me in the rear-view. He had a high voice, a bit throaty, that didn’t match the age of his face. His brow was lined with wrinkles, sad eyes behind his glasses.

  “What if I did?” I said as dismissively as I could, looking out at the buildings and trees as they flashed by the rear window.

  He’d probably seen that guy touch me and got all sorts of ideas.

  An odd sense of calm washed through me, slowly, it was like I was floating. I was angry, so it wasn’t what I wanted, only I couldn’t do a thing about it.

  If it carried on, I’d start crying. That was what it felt like.

  “Big emergency response out there tonight,” the driver said.

  “Oh yeah?” I said. “Fire, was it?”

  “No, a police matter, I think. You don’t live there, though?”

  I didn’t answer him.

  He was probably on his own a l
ot, smoking and drinking, I thought, as we turned into Kong Oscars gate. Not a soul about. It was seldom I saw the city at this time of night. Either I’d be too drunk to notice or asleep.

  When was the last time I cried?

  Must have been a kid.

  I took my pocket knife out and unfolded one of the blades, put the point to the tip of my finger and pressed down, harder still, until the blood began to appear and the pain, thin as a needle, was all that existed for a few seconds.

  “But you’re from here, I can tell from the way you talk,” the driver said.

  “Didn’t you get the message?” I said, licking the trickle of blood from my finger. “Keep your nose out and get a move on. There’s not another car in sight.”

  “Right you are,” he said.

  We went through Kalfaret at speed. Svartediket was only a few minutes from the center of town, though it was hard to believe seeing how deserted it was out there. Good place for devil worshippers, though. They could carry on as they pleased with no one to bother them.

  How had he pulled it off, three killings? Had they been asleep, maybe?

  But why?

  Most likely off his head on some shit or other.

  Or else the devil worship had got to him. Made him think what they were doing was for real and not just for show.

  All that obsession with evil, it was so half baked. Like worshipping the sun. The sun rose every day, no need to worship it to make that happen. Same thing with evil. Evil was already there, and getting along quite nicely on its own.

  My phone vibrated in my inside pocket.

  It was Turid.

  She’d be at work, so she was probably just making sure I wasn’t still out.

  I declined the call and switched the phone off completely.

  The driver turned off Kalfarveien onto a narrower road leading left. A few moments later, he pulled into the side after a junction.

  “Here we are,” he said.

  I got my card out and stuck it in the reader he held out to me, then keyed in my PIN. He’d been too nosy to get a tip.

  He was so pissed off about it he didn’t say a word when I got out.

  As if tips were a right they had.

  I stuck my wallet in my back pocket and started walking, past the silent houses, toward the big, gray dam.

  I looked at the time and hoped the fun wasn’t going to be over before I got there. But it was still only less than half an hour since Geir’s phone call.

  They couldn’t have got much done in that time.

  He’d said right at the waterworks, hadn’t he?

  Yes, he had.

  I turned down a narrow road that led in front of the dam, passing first a small football field, then a basketball court, the sound of rushing water rising as I went.

  I stopped. About seven police vehicles were parked up by the woods on the other side of the channel. Three uniformed, all young, all armed, were hanging about chatting, one of them leaning against the bodywork of a patrol car.

  They didn’t look like they’d noticed me and I stepped back a bit behind the waterworks building where they couldn’t see me.

  What was I going to do?

  I lit a cig and looked up at the wall of the dam. I could just go up to them, of course, explain things the way they were, that I was a reporter and had received a tip to go to the scene. They weren’t going to shoot me, but they’d have a good laugh, that was for sure. There was no way they were going to let a journo in there now.

  But it was a free country, as we said when we were kids.

  And this was a residential area, they could hardly stop me crossing the bridge and going along the road on the other side. From there I could go up the side of the fell and then get round them through the woods.

  A bit of a nuisance, maybe, but worth it.

  I tossed my cigarette away and started walking down. All three police officers clocked me as I went over the little bridge, and I glanced back at them inquisitively, the way I reckoned anyone else would do who just happened to be passing by.

  I could feel their eyes following me and tried to concentrate on just walking normally, but as soon as I’d got round the corner and was out of sight I relaxed again and started looking for a suitable place to scramble up the slope.

  There were houses all along the road, so I’d just have to go through one of the gardens. Likely no one was up at this time anyway, I thought, and opened the nearest gate, walking up the steps into the garden that rose steeply toward a red-painted house. The windows were dark, everything was quiet, and I went as quickly as I could, out of breath before I’d even got past the house, up through the back garden into the trees, where I paused, bent double with my hands on my knees to get my breath back.

  It was still dark, the terrain was pathless and the wood was dense, so this was definitely not going to be fun. But if I was lucky, the bodies would be relatively close by. They were a feeble lot, that satanist crowd, they probably wouldn’t have been assed to go very far.

  I started walking. Below, I could see lights from some of the houses through the trees, and after a bit from the waterworks too. The best thing was probably to keep some height, the police were most likely going back and forth between the vehicles and the scene. I kept having to duck under branches, climbing higher when I couldn’t get through, dropping lower where the ground got too steep. The bushes tore at my legs, here and there was a drystone boundary I had to clamber over, and at one point, as I squeezed through a thicket of spruce instead of going round, I scraped the skin off one cheek.

  I hated forests.

  Why couldn’t they have killed each other in an apartment?

  After ten minutes, I stopped again. The strength was gone from my legs and I was too out of breath to push on. Sweat ran down my brow and stung my eyes with salt.

  At least I’d got as far as the reservoir. I could see the dark water below me through the trees.

  Somewhere in the distance came the thwapping noise of a helicopter.

  Chances were it was on its way to the hospital, hardly more than a kilometer from the waterworks.

  I wiped the sweat from my face with a sleeve, rubbed my eyes with the other and forged on.

  Perhaps sticking to the water wouldn’t be such a bad idea, I thought. For all I knew, I could have already gone past the crime scene.

  I started down the slope. My legs were as soft as flower stalks, it felt like they’d give way any minute.

  The chopper came closer. It wasn’t going to the hospital, that much was obvious. It could only be the police.

  It came in over the fellside and I stopped and looked up. A moment later it went past, dark and hard against the gray-black sky.

  I carried on down. The vegetation was barely penetrable, the ground so steep in places that the bare rock showed through.

  I heard the chopper turn at the bottom of the valley and come back. It flew in low along the fell.

  What were they doing?

  I held on to a branch with one hand and peered up at it.

  It was going slower now.

  No sooner had it passed above me than it turned round again and came back. This time it hovered directly above.

  Surely they couldn’t have seen me?

  I crouched down under a spruce just in case.

  I could no longer see it, but the rotor blades kept thwapping for maybe half a minute before abruptly the sound of them changed and it flew off at something like top speed.

  Emerging from my hiding place, I carried on making my way diagonally down the slope. Only then did it occur to me that the killer might still be around. That he could be lying low in the woods, waiting for things to settle.

  No, he couldn’t be, they’d have the dogs out searching, hunting him down. He’d be well away by now, back in town. He could even be on the other sid
e of the country. If he had a driving license, that is. Could satanists drive? He couldn’t be stupid enough to have flown or taken a train, surely?

  I found myself on some flatter ground and realized I wasn’t that far from the water now. The sky was still dark, I still couldn’t see the hues of the vegetation that surrounded me, but at least I could see where I was putting my feet.

  “POLICE! LIE FLAT OR WE’LL SHOOT! NOW!”

  I dropped to my knees as quick as I could and held my hands over my head.

  “JOURNALIST!” I shouted back. “DON’T SHOOT!”

  “LIE FLAT! ON YOUR STOMACH! NOW!”

  I threw myself down, pressing my face into the ground. A second later, some figures came crashing out of the undergrowth from all sides.

  “I’M A JOURNALIST!” I shouted, my voice muffled by my prone position. But the idiots didn’t care. They descended on me. A knee thrust into the small of my back and a hand pressed my head down as my arms were pulled back behind my shoulders.

  “Ow, for Christ’s sake!” I said. “You’re hurting me! I’m a journalist, I told you!”

  A pair of handcuffs snapped around my wrists and I was hauled to my feet.

  That was when I got my first look at them. Three kids from the special operations unit in full commando gear.

  “What are you doing up here?” one of them said, doing his best to stare me down. He had a scraggy beard, most likely to make him look older.

  “I’ve told you three times. I’m a journalist. I’m covering a case for my paper. Now, do you mind being a good boy and taking these cuffs off me? This is fucking ridiculous.”

  “Name?”

  “Jostein Lindland. Google me if you want.”

  He kept staring at me. I wasn’t going to play his game, so I looked up at the fellside instead.

  After a second, he gestured, a nod of his head and a raised eyebrow, and the two other lads grabbed me by the arms and started leading me down.

  They’d obviously decided that was how they were going to do it, so I said nothing.

  As we approached the water, a path appeared and we followed it. After a bit, it opened out into a clearing below a cleft in the fellside, and when we emerged I finally saw where the killings had taken place. A little patch of grass, no bigger than ten by ten meters, flooded with light from powerful spots, teeming with police. I saw Geir at once, standing outside a white tent that was open at one end, talking to a small guy I took to be Gjertsen. Both looked up, and Geir immediately came toward us.