Gordon Pike was seventy years old and lived in a bungalow in Blackpool with a very fat cat. When I told him who I was, he didn't close the door. He just sighed and let me in.

“I wondered if you'd ever come,” he said. “That job's bothered me for seven years.”

He went to a metal filing cabinet and pulled out a folder with my old name on it.

Inside were the original photos. Not cropped. In every one, there was Ellie, standing right beside Dan, smiling. In the last one, she was hugging me too.

“I was hired by a Miss Amber Cole,” Mr Pike said. “She paid me eight hundred pounds to follow you to Manchester. She said, ‘Get me something we can use.'”

“And the messages?”

He looked uncomfortable. “She asked me if I knew anyone who could make fake text screenshots. I told her no, and that I wanted nothing to do with it. She said she'd sort it herself. And that Tom's mother would help her.”

He handed me a bank statement from seven years ago. A payment of eight hundred pounds. From: A Cole.

“I'll make a statement,” he said. “I should have done it years ago.”