Ktel - as someone with experience of mental illness both as a sufferer, inc a period of psychosis, and also as someone who's nursed mentally ill inc with bipolar disorder (which can be one of the more extreme ones) I have to say I have met irl people who have managed extreme spending while experiencing mania, or even literally losing £100,000's just by obtaining it in cash and giving it to strangers, or leaving it in random places... It absolutely does not seem that improbable to me.
Gambling is another thing people with this illness can easily fall victim to where if they have the means (even if they don't quite) they can lose huge sums of money very quickly and easily.
4 months is plenty of time for this to happen - plus there's whatever his ex wife held onto.
Why not reach out to friends? Because very little they're doing could be logical - inc speech, they can literally be speaking gobbledegook and think they're speaking in normal language and not understand why they're not being understood (this happened to me).
Plus in reality - many you consider friends, don't want to know. There is still huge stigma and misunderstanding around mental illness generally and bipolar, especially manic phases, can be very disconcerting for those without experience or training to deal with.
Feelings of guilt, responsibility can be overwhelming. Wanting to protect loved ones from your demons. It's partly why there's a lot of homeless mentally ill who conceal their identities and avoid getting help. They don't want to be found.
I 'only' have depression, anxiety, OCD, agoraphobia, fairly tame relatively well understood issues and I've certainly learned the hard way who true friends are and who went running (never who you'd expect. When I had my initial breakdown and was hallucinating and 'speaking in tongues', scared to be left in a room alone, someone I would have only classed an 'acquaintance' up until then came through for me in spades, another I thought of as a good friend I didn't see for dust!)
Also - what he was accused of is seen as possibly the most heinous crime one can commit. People believe 'no smoke without fire' don't want to be thought 'guilty by association' especially if they have children of their own they might fear ss involvement or even losing them. They might have been csa victims themselves and react out of self protection. Plus people have their own problems - his friends (just like his friends he spent the millennium weekend with) could also be dealing with their own illness, divorce, debt etc.
I do think Tim tracking him down is suss, don't trust Tim at all. I even wonder if he could have messed with Chris' meds at any point.
Medical treatment of bipolar is a very delicate balancing act. Most psychoactive meds need to be taken continuously to work and take weeks sometimes months of taking regularly to be effective.
The policeman being made redundant isn't necessarily indicative of anything suss, there's been points where large numbers of police have been made redundant purely due to economic cuts and it tends to be last in first out purely for financial reasons (lower redundancy payments and pension payments).
HoppingGreen - that's why the 3 Jan speeding ticket was suss - he'd supposedly already 'gone home' from the weekend house the day before, he supposedly had no excuse to go back to middenham, so no reason to be travelling on that road in that direction at that time.
I do think the twin thing will be significant, but I still think that's a case of Hayley was killed for Jessica's 'crime' against one of them. I'm thinking until very recently Jessica won't have known who the suspects were. That perhaps once she does she'll be like "OMG I saw him doing X and he noticed" which also rules out James as the killer as he's famous, she'd have remembered his involvement. Also because he thought it was his son killed her by hit n run. Also rules out Pete as his pic now been in the papers and if she knows who's involved she'd have recognised him if that's the case.
Just my thoughts.