Page 79

SEVENTY-SIX

The old ice cream pavilion is cold and damp, the air still and pungent with disuse. They sit, all of them, on the cheap wooden chairs that had been stacked into piles around the edges of the room. Ash looks at each woman in turn.

First there is Emma Greenlaw, sitting next to Nina.

Then there is Laura, who is with Lola, the elder of her two daughters.

There are Sam and Joel, Amanda’s grown-up sons, and there are the two girls from the neighborhood app who accused Nick Radcliffe of stalking them.

And then there are the others, the ones who found out about the Facebook page that Nina, Emma, and Ash set up a few days ago called DON’T LET HIM IN.

And then there is the issue of Joe Kritner’s “Silver Man.” Paddy’s case is currently being investigated again by the police who’d done the original investigation, and they are looking afresh at the CCTV footage from that night and the eyewitness reports.

The Tara Truscott case has also been reopened, and the police are now looking into the disappearance of Amanda Law too.

This is their moment, these people here, now, who have been abused, manipulated, stolen from, lied to, and broken by this man. It ends now. And each one of them wants to bear witness to it.

There is a sound, just audible over the crackle of the surf against the beach, of tires over gravel.

Ash and her mother exchange looks. Her mother squeezes her hand hard and smiles. Ash smiles back and looks at the time on her phone.

He’s here.