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

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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. In the business world, you put experts in their field in charge of certain areas of operation. The police quite often don't follow that model," he says. "Ego hinders management in the police world."

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)Doyle was medically discharged from the police in 2020 suffering from PTSD. Now in his 40s, he feels he has paid a heavy price for his career. "I sacrificed my mental health for it," he said in an interview with the Daily Express. And the plan worked. Over the course of a year Doyle became known around Moss Side and Hulme and became a regular drinker in the area. After a stellar career undercover Doyle moves on to finish his police career after adding several major ,and dangerous,investigations to his CV. How were you able to keep your nerve with dangerous and unpredictable characters while you worked undercover in the Omega unit?

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 1 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.

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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. I was discharged from the police force due to mental health issues. I was still relatively young, but I was struggling with PTSD. Before joining Greater Manchester Police he had served seven years in the Army, and knew how to handle firearms and explosives, and execute a plan with military precision. Doyle began his career in Greater Manchester Police on the beat in Tameside. But his talents and street smarts were noticed by his superiors from the off. 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."

It wasn't long before Shay's prodigious talent caught the attention of the top and he was called upon to join the secret Level 1 undercover unit, Omega. He was given a new identity and his DNA and fingerprints were removed from the national database. Nor does he view his own disillusionment as an isolated case. "Many officers in undercover policing walk away with a very bad taste in their mouths. 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?

The final part of Doyle's book tells of the ramifications of the stresses and things he saw as a policeman and his struggles with his mental health are as "edge of the seat" as his adventures in the force