A heartbroken mum has told how her son revealed he was being “threatened” over a drugs debt in the week before he was murdered.

Duncan Banks was found dead with horrific head injuries on 27 September 2015, the High Court at Livingston was told yesterday.

Police forced entry to the 39-year-old’s council flat in Skye Road, Dunfermline, after two of his friends reported seeing his blood covered body through a window.

The officers found Duncan’s body slouched in his favourite armchair, which was soaked with his blood.

A small crowbar 12 inches in length was lying on the floor close to the right hand side of the chair but the flat was clean and tidy with no signs of a disturbance or fight.

The jury and family members in the public gallery were warned about the distressing nature of photographs of Duncan lying dead before the images were shown on the court’s television screens.

The living room was described as a scene of domesticity, with a TV remote control on the arm of Duncan’s chair, his cigarettes and lighter on a table nearby and his slippers on the floor beside his feet.

Steven Thomson, 29, a Prisoner at Perth, is on trial accused of murdering ‘Dunk’, as the dead man was known, and of possessing heroin.

He is charged with repeatedly hitting his alleged victim on the head with a blunt object or objects to his severe injury and robbing him oghf money, heroin, a wallet and a key.

He is also charged with possessing the Class ‘A’ drug at Duncan’s home and elsewhere in Dunfermline between 1 July and 13 October 2015.

He denies the charges and has lodged a special defence incriminating another man.

Duncan’s mother Dorothy Banks, 73, told the jury her son had been in the grip of a drug habit for more than 20 years before his death.

She said heroin had changed Duncan’s personality and he was “always desperate for money”.

She said: “Every day Duncan came looking for money. I always gave hm money, It was to stop him stealing.”

She said he used the money to buy drugs and sometimes to pay off dealers. She admitted it came as a “shock” to learn he was a drug dealer.

She said she last saw her son four days before she learned he was dead.

He failed to turn up for his daily meal with her on Friday and Saturday and, unusually, missed a family roast dinner on the Sunday.

The day his body was found, she said she received two phone calls on her ex-directory line from a David Docherty and Kayleigh Webster, both looking for Duncan.

Later, she said, her friend phoned from a bus passing Duncan’s flat to ask if he was with her.

Mrs Banks told the jury: “I said no. That was when she told me: ‘You obviously don't know then’.

“She said there was police cars there and there was tape around the house.” She said police came to her house later and told her that her son was dead.

Defence counsel Derek Ogg said to her: “The week before his death he told you he needed money because he was being threatened to pay money back.” She answered: “Yes.”

Mr Ogg went on: “The Duncan you knew was always skint, is that right?” She replied: “Yes.”

Mr Ogg asked: “If we’ve heard evidence that he’s supposed to have had hundreds of pounds at his flat what would you say.”

She replied: “I’d find it very difficult to believe because I wouldn’t understand why he was coming to me all the time looking for money.”

Andrew Gillies, 35, who said he regularly bought GBP20 deals of heroin from Duncan, said he had met the accused Thomson near Duncan’s flat.

He told the jury: “Stevie said Dunk had £500 of David (Docherty’s) money from selling drugs and that he knew where he kept it.

“He said: ‘I feel like robbing him,’ but he was laughing when he was saying it. I didn't take him seriously.”

The trial, before Lady Rae, continues.