A Novel
Crossing
Over
Belfast, 1987. A city where the wrong question could get you killed.
Excerpts from Chapter One
January 1987 – Belfast
‘Violence in these so-called “war zones” is usually very localised.’ Her employer’s attempts at reassurance came to mind as Eleanor Dawson cast a wary eye over Belfast from the deck of the Liverpool ferry. For the queue of foot passengers on the quayside, there were no ‘Welcome’ signs or shelter from the rain. The city, she mused, looked rather like the corpse of a dead whale, chimney stacks like bones pointing to the clouds.
Much later, she reprimanded herself for not escaping while she could.
Everyone around the table began silently listing their reasons to decline. She heard her own voice saying, ‘I’ll go, as it seems nobody else wants to,’ her words dropping into silence. Around the table, a cheerful consensus grew that ‘Lena the Dreamer’ was setting herself up for a fall, and a bad one.
On the first morning of her new life, she was steeling herself to throw back the covers when she heard a female newsreader say a man had been shot dead in Belfast overnight. ‘The RUC say it has all the hallmarks of another sectarian murder. No group has yet claimed responsibility.’
Lena wondered how far away Ardoyne was.
‘The Irish have a saying,’ Porter had told her at their farewell dinner. ‘“Whatever you say, say nothing.”’ His voice lowered. ‘If you ever phone me for help, be careful. They’re fond of listening to other people’s conversations over there.’
At the Queen’s University cocktails, Sullivan had rescued her from a blazing public row, putting a hand firmly in the small of Lena’s back and guiding her away. Just as the circle closed behind them, a man even taller than Sullivan stepped into their path.
‘Why run away when you are doing so well?’ the man asked Lena.
‘The law isn’t much protection against an Armalite rifle,’ he said.
‘Interesting,’ Lena replied, ‘that your counter-argument immediately relies on the threat of extreme violence.’
The two of them faced each other – one poised and assured, the other pugnacious, defensive. Sullivan stepped in, his twinkle gone. ‘This discussion is over,’ he said firmly. ‘I’m taking this lady for dinner. Right now.’
‘If you must,’ said the tall man, turning away.
She had not yet learned the tall man’s name. She did not yet know that, the previous month in a cottage in County Down, a man had stood in a darkened garden watching a woman cry alone at her kitchen table – then walked back to the front door with a gun held low in his right hand.
In Belfast, such things had a way of finding you before you found them.
About the Book
From Anne Cadwallader – acclaimed author of the best-selling Lethal Allies: British Collusion in Ireland – comes a gripping debut novel set in the turbulent Belfast of 1987. A young English solicitor, an unresolved murder, and a city where truth and loyalty are lethal currency. Crossing Over is a thriller shaped by decades of reporting from the heart of the Troubles.