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unscrupulously gallant tom with differently coloured eyes and a missing claw. In fact Ringelnatz & Co. had the necessary technical provision for this: a window onto the backyard, tall and narrow (both the window and the yard). When Valerie opened it for some oxygen to combat the tiredness that had overcome her, she thought she glimpsed a modest grey tabby darting away beneath the sill. The yard looked like the set for a Mafia film. In one corner raindrops tussled with brown leaves, while the wind cut so bitterly through the ramshackle walls that Valerie decided it would be better to tilt the window open from the top to stop it from slamming shut in her face. Beforehand, though, she placed a saucer of milk on the sill. Then she lay in wait, wondering what name she’d give the cat. ‘Ruby’ came to mind, but that didn’t suit grey. ‘Grisella’! But wasn’t that the name of a little donkey from a children’s story she vaguely remembered? ‘Grisaille’, perhaps? Valerie didn’t know that this was a painting technique for oil designs. So Grisaille it stayed. She thought it sounded like a friendly old lady,such as Aunt Charlotte. She kept thinking about this until the cat popped onto the window sill and turned out not to be a cat after all. Not even a tom cat. Grisaille was another beast altogether and, yes, Valerie got quite a shock when there it was staring straight at her just a few inches away, albeit separated by the windowpane. For Grisaille was almost the opposite of a cat: she was a rat.

SIX
    I t was some time before Valerie finally secured an appointment with the bank. Till then she’d just had a statement in the post for the end of the quarter. As was to be expected, she saw that there hadn’t been any payments in and only a few deductions – mainly from the bank. Account charges, debit interest, postage, transaction fees. Money for nothing. One ought to be a bank, Valerie thought, as she got on her bicycle and rode to the branch where Aunt Charlotte had her account. She’d packed all the lists that she’d made in the previous weeks: debit, credit, stock, outstanding receivables etc. Now she had to find out what dark spots were still lurking in the finances.
    The customer account manager greeted her with an engaging smile and a glance at her cleavage. As she followed him to one of the consultation booths that had been set up for discreet conversations to the rear of the service centre, she fastened another button on her blouse.
    â€˜Right, we’re very pleased you’ve come to see us. How is your…’ – he looked at the letter she’d written him, which was now in a folder – ‘aunt?’
    â€˜Thanks for asking,’ replied Valerie, who over the course of her studies had learned when it was better to keep some pieces of information to yourself. ‘She’s fine.’
    â€˜I assume you have a letter giving you power of attorney?’
    â€˜Of course.’
    From her documents Valerie took a sheet of paper on which she’d knocked out the following using Aunt Charlotte’s old typewriter:
I hereby give my niece Valerie D. the power of attorney to look after my bank affairs. Yours faithfully, Charlotte K
. She’d extravagantly covered the squiggle beneath this with the freshly inked Ringelnatz & Co. stamp. The banker took the scrap of paper without affording it more than a cursory glance and slipped it into his folder.
    â€˜Now,’ he said, trying to sound businesslike as henoticed to his chagrin the fastened button, ‘what brings you here?’
    â€˜We’re in the process of giving Ringelnatz & Co. a thorough overhaul to relaunch the company. Now that we’ve finished our assessment of stock and have checked and recorded all the bookkeeping matters, assets, liabilities etc., it’s time to address the company’s cashflow and financial resources. We’re also subjecting to