Sara knocked on Caroline’s office door and stepped inside. ‘I’ve been looking at those invoices you snapped photos of,’ she said. ‘I think we might have something.’
‘Go on.’
‘They all seem to be for the same company, DQK Consultancy. They’re all pretty vague. “Services rendered”, “consultancy services provided”, that sort of thing. Only a few hundred quid here and there, but it all starts to add up pretty quickly. Anyway, I did a search at Companies House to see what I could find out about this company. Turns out there’s only one director, by the name of Doris Knowles.’
‘Okay. The name doesn’t ring a bell, but I’m guessing by the look on your face it should.’
Sara smiled. ‘Not necessarily. But the director’s service address listed for Doris Knowles is familiar. It’s Monique Dupont’s home address.’
‘Ah-ha. All innocent and above board, or has she been siphoning cash off to a housemate?’
‘Neither. I had a hunch, so I did a bit more digging. Doris Knowles changed her name by deed poll a number of years ago. To Monique Dupont.’
Caroline let out an involuntary cackle. ‘Seriously? Her real name is Doris? That’s made my bloody day, that has. I can’t wait to drop that one on her. So she’s been raising fake invoices to Allure from her own company and using her position as Finance Manager to pay them? That’s embezzlement, surely.’
‘If we can prove they weren’t authorised,’ Sara replied.
‘And the one person who could’ve testified to that was Martin Forbes. It’s all starting to make sense now. Do we know how much she took in total?’
Sara shook her head. ‘No idea. We’ll know once the guys have been through the accounts software and the bank info, but even just from the invoices we managed to seize from the premises we’re looking at thousands, if not tens of thousands.’
‘Wow. What a mess. Brilliant work, Sara. Absolutely fantastic. Between you and me, I think I’m going to have a lot of fun in this interview.’
12
Caroline walked into the interview room feeling like the cat that got the cream. She sat down next to Dexter, opposite Monique and her solicitor, both of whom looked as though they’d rather be anywhere else.
‘Okay Monique,’ she said, starting the interview. ‘Let’s begin by recapping what you told me earlier today at your workplace, shall we? For the record, you told me that you’d been having a relationship with Martin Forbes for some time. To use your words, it was “just sex”. Is that correct?’
Monique replied without looking up. ‘No comment.’
‘Right,’ Caroline said, sighing. ‘Now, I don’t know if that’s something you’ve got off the telly or if your solicitor told you to say that, but I’ll give you credit and presume it’s the latter. He may well have led you to believe that because you told me about the affair before you were arrested, it won’t be admissible in court. First of all, that’s not strictly correct. In fact, it would likely count heavily against you in court if you were shown to have retracted evidential statements which we can otherwise prove to be true.’
‘Those last four words being the crucial ones,’ the solicitor remarked.
‘I don’t think they’ll be an issue,’ Caroline replied, smiling and turning her attention back to Monique. ‘Besides which, if you’re as innocent as you make out, you have nothing to worry about, do you? Holding things back is only going to prolong the situation. So it was “just sex”, was it?’
Monique looked briefly at her solicitor, and Caroline could see her confidence in him had started to fall. ‘No comment,’ she whispered.
‘Okay. In that case, let’s move on to something else. We can circle back round later. When I came back to the offices of Allure Design earlier today, I found you shredding some documents. Can you tell me what they were please?’
‘No comment.’
‘That’s fine. We seized the rest of them anyway, plus the ones that had already been shredded. It’s an impressive cross-cut shredder, but you’d be amazed at what our guys can do nowadays, especially if they’ve got an idea what they’re looking for. I imagine that’ll be more invoices, will it? That’s what made up the rest of the pile.’
Monique chose not to answer.
‘The invoices were all made out to a company called DQK Consultancy. Have you heard of them?’
She glanced at her solicitor again before answering, this time even less convincingly. ‘No comment.’
‘The sole director of DQK Consultancy is somebody called Doris Knowles. Does that name ring any bells?’
Caroline watched as Monique clenched her jaw. She could tell from the body language between her and her solicitor that she’d already disclosed the truth to him. They must have been well aware this was going to come out.
‘Doris Knowles is you, isn’t it?’ she asked.
‘I hated the name,’ Monique answered, through gritted teeth. ‘It was my grandmother’s name. She died two weeks before I was born. I never even met the woman, and I already got saddled with a dead person’s name. I wouldn’t have minded if it was a nice name, but it’s just so… common.’
Caroline raised her eyebrows. ‘Well I’m sure your nan’s jumping for joy up there at the way you chose to honour her memory.’
‘Like I say, I never met her. There was nothing about my name that particularly appealed.’
‘So you changed your name. To the rather… different… Monique Dupont.’
‘Yes.’
‘Why did you form DQK Consultancy in your old name then?’
Monique took a deep breath, then exhaled heavily. ‘I don’t know. I wanted a bit of distance.’
‘And has DQK Consultancy ever functioned as an actual business, or does it exist purely to embezzle funds from Allure Design?’
The solicitor cleared his throat. ‘Detective Inspector, please take care with your choice of words.’
Caroline ignored him and looked at Monique. ‘Monique?’
‘Martin knew about it,’ she said eventually. ‘I raised
