Jane received a link from Ash and opened a news report on her phone. The article, posted three hours earlier, stated that a man was lost and feared drowned in the English Channel at Bangate Cove and that search-and-rescue efforts had been called off at nightfall. It identified the man as Simon Smith, 55, wanted by Hastings police for assaulting a seventy-year-old woman and financial extortion. It also noted ongoing investigations into the disappearance and possible murder of two women, and conspiracy to commit murder related to a man pushed under a London tube train fifteen months prior.

The report added that two men who tried to rescue Simon were treated for mild hypothermia but did not require hospitalization. Witness accounts pointed to Simon’s wider history of financial extortion, coercive control, physical abuse, street stalking, and antisocial behavior. One witness told a local reporter that Simon had been the focus of a Facebook group for women who believed they were his victims, and that the witnesses on the beach were members of that group. The news page then went offline.

After reading, Jane looked up at the sky and processed conflicting emotions. She felt a measure of triumph that Nick Radcliffe/Simon might have finally paid for his crimes, but disappointment that there would be no public trial or prison sentence. Most of all, she regretted that there would be no closure for the children of Tara Truscott and Amanda Law, since Simon appeared to have taken the truth about their mothers’ fates with him into the sea.

Jane reflected that death was an easy escape for Simon but consoled herself that the world would now know he was a killer and serial abuser. She returned to Ash’s message and replied, telling him, “You did it,” and affirming that he was an incredible person, that his father would have been proud, and that she was proud of him too.