Page 1 of Worse Than Murder

Tuesday 11 August 1992

High Chapel, Cumbria

Alison Pemberton opened her eyes. It took a while for them to adjust from the darkness to the brilliance of the August sunshine. She’d been leaning against a tree, head down, eyes closed, counting, listening for the sounds of her sisters running away to hide. She heard the giggles and the swish of the long grass, but they were soon replaced by silence. She looked around her and saw nothing. Normally, she would be scared to be on her own, but this was a game, and games were fun.

‘Coming. Ready or not,’ she called out.

Alison, dressed in pink shorts and a white top, white-blonde hair pulled back into bunches, skipped over the knee-high grass.

In the last game, it had been Alison’s turn to hide, and she’d hidden behind the prickly bush that scratched her legs. She headed for there now, hoping to find one, or maybe both, of her sisters crouched behind it. They weren’t there.

She turned around as a warm breeze picked up. The grass swayed, but there was no other movement. Her sisters had hidden well.

They weren’t behind the dead tree. They weren’t under the overhanging bush. They weren’t lying down in the dried-up stream, and they weren’t hiding in their makeshift den.

Alison frowned, but she wasn’t overly worried. She could still see her back garden and her house from here. If she didn’t find them, she would just go home and tell their mum. Celia was so good at hide-and-seek though. She will have taken Jennifer’s hand and run off to the best hiding place.

Alison stood stock-still and looked around her. Celia might be good at hiding, but she was terrible at staying quiet. She’d be struggling to hold in her laughter, and the urge to jump up and shout ‘BOO!’ to make her scream would be too much for her to hold in. All Alison had to do was stand and watch and wait and listen.

There was no sound. Even the wind had stopped.

Alison stood in the centre of the field and turned in a circle, looking for any sign of her sisters.

She heard something. It sounded like a car door slamming closed.

Alison wasn’t allowed to go to the road on her own without either her mum or dad, but she went anyway. She ran to the edge of the field, up the slight incline and picked her way through the bushes. She stepped out onto the smoothness of the road, looked right, and saw nothing, looked left, and saw a car driving away.

In the back, her sisters, Celia and Jennifer, were looking at her out of the window. Jennifer waved.

Alison waved back.

It must be game over, she thought.

Alison watched as the car disappeared out of sight before scrambling back through the bushes, down the incline and back into the field. She didn’t give her sisters a second thought as she picked up her sausage dog on a string and began playing on her own.

‘Come on, Stanley, be a good boy,’ she said to the dog.

Her stomach growled and she wondered how long it would be before her mum called her in for something to eat.

Thursday 17 June 2021

High Chapel, Cumbria

As PC Alison Pemberton enters the briefing room at High Chapel Police Station, a cheer explodes. Everyone rises to their feet and applauds. Alison stands in the doorway and blushes.

Inspector Gill Forsyth walks over to her and puts her arm around Alison’s shoulders. She guides her to the front of the room to face the entirety of the police station– all eight of them.

‘Ladies and gentlemen,’ Gill begins. ‘We have in our midst a true hero, a remarkable and selfless individual who, on Tuesday evening, while off duty, came to the aid of a man in great distress.’

A ripple of laughter runs around the room. Alison shakes her head in embarrassment.

Gill continues. ‘Putting the lives of innocent bystanders before her own, PC Pemberton leapt into action and took control of what could have been a most dangerous and savage situation. I want you all to look at PC Pemberton with pride and hold her up as the true icon and role model she is. Congratulations, PC Pemberton.’

More applause rings out.

‘You’re all sods and I hate you,’ Alison says once they finish mocking her.

‘Fortunately,’ Gill says. ‘Thanks to the wonders of modern technology, there was a bystander on hand to capture PC Pemberton’s heroics and post a photo all over social media. And, this morning, I received a delivery from the printers.’