He could see her little nose, sniffing, poking out from behind the curtain of her hair. She was sniffing him, all right. They all did. It had begun.
‘I’ll open a window, shall I?’ he offered wearily.
Isserley flashed an awkward smile, embarrassed at being caught out.
‘No, no, it’s raining,’ she protested. ‘You’d get wet. I – I don’t really mind the smell, actually. I was just wondering what it is.’
‘It’s dog,’ he said, staring straight ahead of him.
‘Dog?’
‘Pure aroma of dog,’ he affirmed. ‘Essence of spaniel.’ He clenched his fists against his thighs, and agitated his feet against the floor; Isserley noticed he wasn’t wearing any socks. Grunting repeatedly as if being teased with a sharp implement, he grimaced into his lap, then suddenly asked, ‘Are you person or a cat person?’
Isserley thought that one over for a minute.
‘Neither, really,’ she said, still unsure of her footing in this bizarre conversation. She racked her brains to retrieve what little she knew on the subject of cats and dogs. ‘I don’t know if I could take good care of a pet,’ she admitted, noting another hitcher on the next hill, wondering if she’d made a mistake choosing this one. ‘It sounds complicated, from what I’ve heard. Don’t you have to keep pushing a dog off your bed, to show him who’s boss?’
The vodsel grunted again, in pain this time, as he tried to cross one leg over the other irritably, and hit his knee on the underside of the dashboard.
‘Who told you that?’ he sneered.
Isserley decided against mentioning the dog breeder, in case the police were looking for him. ‘I think I read it somewhere,’ she said.
‘Well, I don’t sleep on a bed,’ said the shabby vodsel, folding his arms across his chest. His voice had lowered to a monotone again, a strange mixture of prickly insolence and unfathomable despair.
‘Really?’ said Isserley. ‘What do you sleep on?’
‘A mattress in the back of my van,’ he said, as if she was trying to argue him out of it but he’d ceased to care. ‘With the dog.’
Unemployed, thought Isserley. Then, immediately: it doesn’t matter. Let him go. It’s over. Amlis has gone away. No-one loves you. The police are moving in. Go home.
But she had no home to go to, not really. Not unless she did her job. Pushing back defeatist thoughts, she tried instead to reason with the vodsel at hand.
‘If you own a van,’ she challenged him politely, ‘why are you hitch-hiking? Why not drive yourself?’
‘Can’t afford the petrol,’ he muttered.
‘Doesn’t the government give you… um… an allowance?’
‘No.’
‘No?’
‘No.’
‘I thought everybody who’s unemployed gets an allowance from the government.’
‘I’m not unemployed,’ he retorted. ‘I own a business.’
‘Oh.’ Isserley saw, out of the corner of her eye, a peculiar change coming over his face. Colour had risen to his cheeks, and his eyes glistened, with a feverish enthusiasm perhaps, or tears. He bared his teeth, which were punctuated by the creamy Polyfilla of old food.
‘I pay myself a wage, y’see?’ he declared, his enunciation suddenly clear. ‘Whatever I can afford. Once I’ve paid my employees.’
‘Um… so how many people have you got working under you?’ asked Isserley, perturbed by the rictus of his grin, the intensity of his concentration. He seemed to have been roused from a coma, drastically infused with a potent cocktail of fury, self-pity and hilarity.
‘Well now, there’s a question, there’s a question,’ he said, thrumming his fingers against his thighs. ‘They may not all be turning up at the factory, y’see. Might have got discouraged by the locked gates. Might have got discouraged by the lights being off. I haven’t shown up there myself, for the last few weeks. It’s in Yorkshire, y’see. Lot of petrol to get to Yorkshire. And then, I owe the bank about three hundred thousand pounds.’
The rain was easing off now, allowing Isserley to orient herself. She could set him down in Alness, if his craziness got out of hand. She’d never had anyone quite like him before. She wondered, alarmingly, if she liked him.
‘Does that mean you’re in trouble?’ she asked, meaning the money.
‘In trouble? Me? No-o-o-o,’ he said. ‘I haven’t broken any laws.’
‘But aren’t you a… a missing person?’
‘I sent my family a postcard,’ he fired back immediately, grinning, grinning all the while, sweat twinkling in his eyebrows and on his moustache. ‘Peace of mind for the cost of a stamp. Saves the police from wasting valuable time, too.’
Isserley stiffened at the mention of police. Then, having ordered her body to relax, she got suddenly worried in case she’d let her arms sag into an angle impossible for vodsel musculature. She glanced down at her left arm, the one nearest him. It looked fine. But what was that horrible squeaking noise near her face? Oh: it was the windscreen wipers, scraping dry glass. Hastily, she switched them off.
Give up, it’s over, she thought.
‘Are you married?’ she said, after a deep breath.
‘Now there’s a question, there’s a question,’ he responded, seething, virtually rising off his seat. ‘Am I married. Am I married. Let me think now.’ His eyes shone so fiercely they looked ready to explode. ‘Yes, I suppose I was married,’ he decided, as if conceding, with grisly good humour, a point someone else had just scored at his expense. ‘For twenty-two years, as a matter of fact. Until last month, as a matter of fact.’
‘And now you’re divorced?’ pursued Isserley.
‘So I’m told, so I’m told,’ he said, with a wink like a violent tic.
‘I don’t understand,’ said Isserley. Her head was starting to ache. The car was full of the heady stink of dog, the radioactive glare of psychic torment and the sudden blaze of noonday sun right in her eyes.
‘Have you ever loved anyone?’ the vodsel challenged her.
‘I – I don’t know,’ said Isserley. ‘I don’t think so.’ She would have to take him soon, or let him go. Her heart was starting to labour, and her stomach seemed to be going into spasm. There was a roaring sound somewhere behind her, which a glance at the rear-view mirror confirmed was another vehicle – a mammoth campervan, tilting from side to side impatiently. Isserley checked her own speed and was unnerved to find it was thirty-five miles an hour – slow even for her – so she drove a little closer to the edge.
‘I loved my wife, y’see,’ the dog-smelly vodsel was saying. ‘I loved her very much. She was my world. The full Cilia Black.’
‘I beg your pardon?’
As the campervan swept past, dragging its shadow over Isserley’s car, the vodsel began to sing, loudly and uninhibitedly.
‘Sh’was my world, she was my night, my da-a-ay; sh’was my world, sh’was every breath, I ta-a-ake, and if our love, ceases to be-e-e, then it’s the end of my world, for me-e-e!’ He shut up as abruptly as he’d begun, and was again grinning at her fiercely, tears leaking down his grizzled cheeks. ‘Get the picture?’
Isserley’s head throbbed as she eased the car back towards the middle.
‘Are you under the influence of mind-altering drugs?’ she said.
‘Could be, could be,’ he winked again, ‘Fermented potato juice, made in Poland. Tough on pain, tough on the causes of pain, all for six pounds forty-nine a bottle. Bit of a disappointment in bed, though. And conversation’s a bit onesided, I feel.’
The A9 was clear for several hundred yards in front and behind, the campervan having sped half-way to the horizon. Isserley let one finger rest on the icpathua toggle. Her heart wasn’t beating as hard as it usually did; instead, she felt sick, as if she might throw up any minute. She took a deep breath of dog-flavoured air, and made an effort to tie up the one last loose end.