Paul Stokes was a young businessman who was a potential client of Underworld. Nick Tilsley had got him interested in doing a deal and arranged for him to visit the factory. At the last minute, Nick did a runner to the Lake District, agreeing after some argument to go along with his brother David Platt’s plan to bribe a cleaner in the holiday cottage on the scene of the death of Joe McIntyre some months before - an incident for which their mother Gail now stood on trial for murder.