“He told me to go to Kings Cross railway station where an accomplice called Alex had something for me. “I went to see him and he said he’d been arrested for interfering with a little girl,” claims Ronnie. Armed with a Visiting Order, he would meet him inside Brixton Prison. He was soon to be introduced to a sinister character higher up the chain. In hindsight, those tasks were tests – aimed at gauging the new recruit’s true worth, Ronnie reckons. All his tax details were on there, along with and some child pornography.” “I took it to the police station and copied the hard-drive. Take the computer away and bring it back when I ask you’. ‘The taxman is going to hit me,’ I was told, ‘and I want to make his job more difficult. He said he had a computer with all his tax details on. 'Before I went, a colleague warned me not to wear brown shoes – undercover officers always wore brown shoes. If you want me to come down to London, you’ve got to pay me’. “He wanted to meet again in London,” he says. The mob was entirely satisfied that Ronnie Howard was one of their own. The pair exchanged pager numbers,” he says, and it wasn’t long before contact was again made. That was the start of a job that would plunge the Brummie into the depths of serious organised crime.

I asked, ‘What about the funny money?’ and he told me he had one million Euros. “He had a mirror the size of a door and a tapestry,” says Ronnie. The meeting then switched to the gangster’s office. I had a conversation and he asked if I could do anything with antiques. “We went in this pub and there was the main man and four other guys. “Ever been to Mayfair? Fabulous place – all the women look like Princesses!

“I met the informant at the entrance to a tube station and he told me we were going to Mayfair. “He told me the guy he thought was involved and said I’d have to meet him with an informant, a Greek guy,” Ronnier recalls. His brief, he says, was outlined during a Scotland Yard meeting with a detective inspector. The ex-cop alleges the sting took place during a mid 1990s undercover investigation into forged bank notes – “funny money” – for the Metropolitan Police.

Life and crimes of crooked ex-West Midlands cop Larry Shaw.

West Midlands Police paid more than £1 MILLION to informants.

The gangsters were totally taken in, and snared at Scratchwood Services, North London, the pre-arranged pay-off point. Ronnie says he convinced the mobster paymaster that the hit had been carried out by getting the intended targets to pose plastered with fake wounds. The deal was finalised during visits to Brixton Prison. He also wanted the detective spearheading the investigation rubbed out. Ronnie says he was hired by a behind bars Mr Big facing child sex offence charges to kill the 14-year-old girl at the centre of the case.

Scotland yard undercover detective