Barnes opened the door into the incident room for Kay and fell into step behind the detective inspector while she weaved between the desks to the whiteboard.
He slid the car keys next to his computer keyboard as he passed, then nodded his thanks when she held out a thick black pen to him and pointed at the board.
‘How do you want to approach this?’ she said as he began to write.
‘It’s going to be tricky talking to the parents again, I think.’ He frowned, then reached into his pocket for his reading glasses and peered at the other notes layering the board’s surface before adding the salient points from the post mortem findings. ‘Maybe we try to speak to the mother, Isobel, first. I mean, she seemed to be the one who Felicity confided in and she was the one who flagged that Felicity had been taking time off work from the supermarket because of bad cramps.’
‘I’m inclined to agree with you on that one.’ Kay folded her arms and leaned against a nearby desk. ‘At least then we’ll be able to establish a timeframe of when she might have started taking the drugs but it must’ve been a while. From what Lucas was saying, Felicity was facing a bleak future health-wise. Those cramps were only the start of it – she’ll have deteriorated since then.’
‘We’ll need to try to understand what – or who – got her started taking drugs, and who her supplier was as well,’ said Barnes.
He re-capped the pen and turned to run his gaze over the incident room until he saw Laura standing beside her desk and beckoned to her.
‘The two friends you spoke to this morning – did they make any mention of Felicity taking drugs?’
‘They lost touch with her about eighteen months ago but confirmed that, as far as they knew, she wasn’t a user back then.’ Laura jutted her chin at the whiteboard. ‘Are those the PM findings?’
‘Yes – we should get the full report later this week,’ said Barnes, ‘but it looks like Felicity was a regular ketamine user. Lucas is sure that a combination of that and the alcohol found in her system was an indication that she may have been hallucinating when she died.’
He saw Kay nibbling at a fingernail as she listened, her eyes on the board. ‘Are you all right, guv?’
‘Yes,’ she mumbled, dropping her hand. ‘Just thinking that with the theft from the vet practice that there’s even more of this stuff out there now.’
‘Sarge? Got a minute?’
Barnes turned at the sound of Dave Morrison’s voice to see the uniformed constable walking towards them.
‘Sure. What’ve you got?’
‘Background checks for the people Felicity was contacting via email and her social media accounts on a regular basis – courtesy of Andy Grey’s lot at Northfleet.’ Morrison handed them each a photocopied page. ‘This is a summary of the ones I think we should start with. There’s a local supplier of materials she emailed at least once a week, and Andy’s managed to put together her client list as well. There are four active clients at the moment that Felicity was creating design briefs for, and two that owe her money for interior design services she finished last month. He’s still working on her mobile phone records though.’
‘That’s an extensive list. Good work,’ said Kay. ‘How do you want to split these up, Ian?’
Barnes scratched the side of his nose. ‘Dave – can you phone the two clients who owe money and maybe visit them if you think the conversations warrant it?’
‘Will do.’
‘Thanks – that then leaves the four active clients…’
‘I can take two of those, Ian,’ said Laura. ‘I can speak to them in between finishing going through the CCTV footage from the vets, if Gavin doesn’t mind…’
‘Have a word with him, make sure he’s happy for you to split your workload between the two of us,’ said Barnes. ‘Kay and I will take the other two clients in the morning then.’
‘What about bank statements?’ said Kay. ‘Have those come in yet?’
‘Hang on, guv. They’re on my desk.’ Morrison jogged back to his seat, swept up a stack of paperwork and handed it over. ‘You can see from the summary balances at the top that Felicity wasn’t doing as well as she was alluding to on social media. You’ve got a current account there with a maxed-out overdraft facility and I’ve also checked her credit card statement – she was a few hundred pounds off the limit on that, and only making the minimum repayment each month.’
Barnes grimaced as he peered over Kay’s shoulder. ‘Looks like most of her money is going on clothes. I recognise some of those store names.’
‘When I looked at her social media profile for her business, she’s never wearing the same clothes twice,’ said Laura. ‘I thought maybe she might’ve borrowed some of them or bought second-hand…’
‘Not looking at this lot, she didn’t.’
Kay caught his eye as she handed back the bank statements to Morrison. ‘On top of that, she was funding a serious drugs dependency, too. I’ll make a few more discreet enquiries with Isobel Gregor to find out if Felicity contributed to any bills while she was living at home, and see if she’s aware of any other income sources.’
‘Okay, thanks.’ Barnes turned and swept his gaze over the myriad of notes on the whiteboard before sighing.
It seemed the more they discovered about Felicity Gregor’s lifestyle, the more questions arose.
‘And we have no bloody answers,’ he muttered.