Deep Cover: How I took down Britain’s most dangerous gangsters

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Shay grew up on a tough Manchester council estate where drugs and gangs were rife. A life of crime would have been an easy path to take. So it went against everything that was expected of him when he joined the police. All the while, Doyle was working out doggedly and training himself to become an expert on criminal commodities, learning the going rate for everything from a kilo of cocaine to a MAC-10 machine gun. Even now, I can tell when someone's an off-duty cop just by listening to their conversation in a café.

I'm proud of the work I did that kept people safe, that stopped them from being shot dead, that removed guns from the streets. That's what I signed up to do. Some of the practices adopted by those infiltrating the world of activism I find absolutely disgraceful," he says. "It's a different world to that of organised crime." This time he wasn't getting up. Neither were the two young women he'd just murdered. The two unarmed young police officers he cut down in a hail of 32 bullets and the fragments of a grenade, ending their promising lives so savagely, so senselessly. I felt empty. Cold. How had it come to this?

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It was like I'd vanished. I was given a new passport, birth certificate, driving licence, bank cards, credit cards, all the essential documents for a new identity," said Doyle in a interview with the Star. "I learned how to make cutting ­charges to blow a hole in a wall and how to breach the skin of an armoured cash van with a shape charge. That said, some of his work (albeit not his undercover work so much, but his intermittent work in the organised crime unit) led him to take on Dale Cregan and the OCG he was part of, after Cregan murdered two police officers, and then later, to pursue Paul Massey’s killers. All the years he had spent learning the ways of the street: how to talk, what to say, how to conduct himself in the company of criminals proved to be gold dust. "Most cops speak in cop language, even when they are off duty - any decent criminal can spot them a mile off," he says. I just don't speak like that. All I had to do was put to use all the attributes I'd been unconsciously collecting all my life." Shay's police career spanned 17 years, and he was one of the UK's chosen few Level 1 undercover operatives.

The rise and fall of Dominic Noonan, the paedophile gangster who once ruled Manchester's underworld Certain things came easy to me, and I had an innate drive to succeed. Whatever field I went into, I would put myself up against more educated people, and it gave me fuel”.Even going to the supermarket with my girlfriend was a f***ing drama," he said. "One time we were in my local Tesco when I spotted someone I knew turning into the aisle we were in. To add credibility to his cover story, he worked alongside Nikki, a fellow Level 1 covert operator who dressed up in Gucci and posed as his girlfriend. As someone so utilised, he was used against some major criminals, though most of his assignments seem to have been against wider criminal fraternities. So, for example, he worked undercover in the Moss Side in Manchester, building a picture of the criminal landscape there, and again later in Cambridge. What he never seems to have done is been deployed against a major criminal or crime family, such as the Adams crime family in London, or the Noonan crime family in Manchester. So, he never seems to have been deployed to infiltrate such an OCG and “bring them down”. This isn’t a criticism of Shay, or even the police. As a layperson, I don’t know. Perhaps that’s not how it’s done, or such an operation would be too risky. It wouldn't be long before Shay's prodigious talent caught the attention of the top. Then came the call that changed his life: an offer to join the secret level one undercover unit known as Omega. And it was easy to see why they wanted him; he wouldn't have to stray too far from what he already knew. He had all the attributes of a professional criminal - the athletic physique of a cage fighter, the talk, the walk. Streetwise and fearless, he'd be a match for the most hardened villain. He was given a new identity; his DNA and fingerprints were removed from the national database and so began the life of Mikey O'Brien. This time he wasn't getting up. Neither were the two young women he'd just murdered. The two unarmed young police officers he cut down in a hail of 32 bullets and the fragments of a grenade, ending their promising lives so savagely, so senselessly. I felt empty. Cold. How had it come to this?'

There he unleashed a hail of bullets on the two unarmed officers, tossed a hand grenade on their dying bodies and then calmly handed himself in at Hyde police station. Pc Fiona Bone (left) and Pc Nicola Hughes (Image: PA) The soldier-turned-undercover policeman risked his life to infiltrate south Manchester's gangland. He was also on the frontline of some of the most high profile police operations in Greater Manchester history, including the Stepping Hill poisonings and the hunt for double cop killer Dale Cregan. It was decided I needed a girlfriend so Nikki (a fellow UC officer) would be dressed to the nines in Jimmy Choo heels with a Gucci or Vuitton handbag.

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Paul Massey was known as Salford's 'Mr Big' (Image: Manchester Evening News) Read More Related Articles If Deep Cover was a piece of fiction it would be exceptional,as a true story by one of Britain's top undercover policemen, and they're all genuine heroes, it's mind-blowing. I remember watching it all unfold and thinking it was like Northern Ireland in the bad old days," writes Doyle. "There was an air of excruciating tension unlike anything I'd ever witnessed in the police before." I’d spent my life at the sharp end, chasing gangsters. Feeling the adrenaline of going through the door, the rush of a big arrest. All that was gone.”