DS Debbie McAllister  played by Natalie Roles

First appearance    On the Hook part I (03/11/00)     

Debbie McAllister may have been a Detective Sergeant, and she may have seemed easygoing, but she was CID's Bad Girl. Drafted in from Barton Street, McAllister was initially a newly made up sergeant and appeared to be solid: on everyone's side, charming, a friend to all, with a clean record and a reputation for courage and integrity (they'd heard that she'd blown the whistle over some minor corruption in a previous nick).  

The problem was McAllister was a fake. In reality she was an unexceptional officer, and a highly insecure woman whose real talent lied in her instinct for knowing when, where and how to manipulate others so as to avoid putting herself in the firing line – even if this meant shafting her colleagues. Scheming, untrustworthy but utterly irresistible, McAllister was prepared to do anything to further her career or save her skin. She was a skilled propagandist and stirrer around the nick - and may well have been in line for a fall.

And fall she did...Debbie's fling and subsequent pregnancy, marriage and rape by Supt. Tom Chandler gave her the shock of her short life, and she found herself bringing up a son, Andrew, as a single parent. Without a maternal bone in her body, it was quite a challenge. But nothing kept a good Debbie down, and she did whatever it took to claw her way to the top again. Never mind who she scratched on the way up...

When Andrew had an accident leaving him with internal bleeding, Debbie decided she had given all she could to the Force and resigned to take care of her son.