‘Do you ever go back yourself?’

He shook his head wistfully.

‘Anyway, slainte,’ he said a little sadly, raising his double scotch.

He headed to a seat in the far corner of the lounge, where he sat bolt upright and slung it back in one. Seamus came downstairs and told me he was popping out for a short while. He was always ‘popping out’. I struggled to imagine where he’d be going for a quarter of an hour at this time of night.

When I next looked, Shep had gone. He only ever stayed for one, always around closing time, but he seemed on very good terms with the regulars.

Over the weeks, I got to know several of the officers by name. And soon it became routine that Shep would pop in to chat to me every day at closing time, often asking about who’d been in and at what time. This soon progressed to what they’d been gossiping about. If a titbit of news particularly pleased him, he’d stand me a pint. He was a man you wanted to please.

I finally twigged that Seamus also ‘popped out’ every night around the same time Shep finished his nightcap: Seamus must have been his snout. I didn’t dare confirm this by spying on them, and I never mentioned it to a soul. But I had no doubt that Seamus was passing on all he heard from pissed coppers during their late-night sessions. As was I. It was hard to refuse the man.

No doubt, the lock-ins generated little money but lots of valuable indiscretion. Because the Yard handled everything from Royal security to organised crime, the sheer scale of suppressed scandals made my eyes water. I learned about Princess Diana’s apparent habit of stalking married men, the celebrity customers of major drugs dealers, the sexual peccadilloes of senior government ministers. Hardly a night passed when I didn’t think: ‘Imagine what Fintan would do with that information?’

Of course, I should have expected my new job to come with conditions. Four weeks in, Fintan called the pub one afternoon and instructed me to meet him at the Queen Victoria memorial, down the road near Buckingham Palace. I wondered why he couldn’t just come to the Feathers.

As we walked through St James’s Park, he told me how Scotland Yard had set up a secret ‘Ghost Squad’ to crack down on corruption. As a result, officers had grown paranoid about meeting him, or even talking to him on the phone, making his job nigh-on impossible. I was only half-listening, when he asked me if I could help him out.

‘Help out how?’

‘Well any cop could go into the Feathers and chat to the barman, couldn’t they? That wouldn’t raise an eyebrow.’

‘I suppose …’

‘You could pass on messages for me,’ said Fintan, ‘you know, act as a sort of go-between for me and my contacts.’

For several minutes, I was too shocked to speak. God knows why.

‘Don’t worry,’ Fintan laughed, ‘I’m not asking you to pass brown envelopes, just phone numbers, times and places where I can meet or talk to people, stuff like that.’

What staggered me most was Fintan’s matter-of-fact tone, as if bent cops, immoral hacks and shadowy fixers was a business standard.

‘Isn’t that corrupt?’

‘How is it corrupt? You’re just passing on messages?’

‘I mean you getting information from cops on the take?’

‘Who said anything about them being on the take?’

‘Why else would they give information to you?’

Fintan stopped walking so he could focus on putting me right: ‘Some leak information to me because they can’t accept a cover-up, or unaccountability. Others to boost their own careers, or to bring down a rival. The smarter ones recognise the power of the press, and use it to put pressure on their own organisation. Look, it’s not my job to work out their motivation. If it’s in the public interest, I print it.’

‘But you pay some of them, right? Some of them must do it just for the money?’

‘There are a few who’ve had money troubles, and some who are plain greedy, but what’s important is that they pass on vital information. This stops the people in power getting away with murder.’

‘Murder?’ I scoffed.

‘Trust me,’ said Fintan, ‘Northern Ireland, Hillsborough, the miners’ strike, Lockerbie, you name it, senior police and politicians have lied and lied to cover their arses. People in power don’t serve the public, they serve their own agendas, which is getting more power.’

‘Yeah but that doesn’t justify …’

‘Look what’s happened to Eve. There are cops, as well as judges and politicians that would have let her hang to save their own arses, and you know it.’

‘Well, yeah but, this middle man stuff, it all sounds so sleazy,’ I said.

‘Everything to do with power is sleazy, Donal, Jesus. I’m just asking you to pass on a phone number every now and then.’

I examined his jowly pale face, looking ten years older than his twenty-eight and racked with indignation. He’d been banished from Ireland by the gilded circle. Now he wanted to wage war against the powerful, using any means necessary. This was his unfinished business.

‘How do you think we get stories, Donal?’ he patronised. ‘You think we just publish what Scotland Yard tells us? God they’d love that. The public has a right to know certain things that the people at the top don’t want them to know. It’s called democracy.’

‘Call it what you like, Fintan. I can’t do it. That’s the end of it.’

Fintan took a deep breath.

‘I think it might be too late for that,’ he said, eyeing me sourly.

‘What do you mean?’ I said.

‘No doubt you’ve seen Seamus giving out free drinks? Who do you think is paying for those drinks?’

I’ve always hated riddles.

‘You’ve most likely seen Seamus passing envelopes,’ said Fintan, ‘what do you think is in those envelopes? And where do you suppose the cash comes from?’

‘I’ve never seen any envelopes. And if I had, what would it have to do with me? Nothing,’ I protested.

‘Is that right?’ said Fintan, challenging me with his glare. ‘You think the Ghost Squad haven’t been into the Feathers and seen you giving out free drinks?’

Every drop of blood in my head went south.

‘You think they don’t know who you are? You think they’d believe you if you said you didn’t know anything about what was going on? That, as a brother of mine, you’re not complicit in the whole thing?’

‘I’m not complicit in anything!’

‘You may as well help me, Donal. If they launch a witch hunt you’ll be taking the fall anyway. At least this way you’ll get some protection, from me and the officers you help. As it stands, you’re totally isolated.’

I only became aware that my mouth was hanging open when I tried to say ‘Jesus Christ’, but dribbled instead.

‘Have a think about it,’ said Fintan, raising his collar against the biting wind, checking left and right then scurrying off. Fintan Lynch, champion of the free press, like a rat caught out in the open.

As I saw it, I had only one option: quit the Feathers and lay low for a while.

Instead, that closing time, I asked Dan Shepard to meet me the following morning at the most obscure location I could think of, a Harlesden café so squalid that even we used to avoid it.

I figured that, after all the helpful information I passed his way, Shep owed me. As a senior officer, surely he could offer me the ‘protection’ Fintan seemed to think I’d need. And, although conscious that I may have been suffering either A) Stockholm Syndrome or B) some sort of unconscious craving for a father figure, I actually liked Shep.

Next morning, Shep’s flint-sharp suit, rolled-up Times and flashy rainbow golf umbrella caught the eye of a few road workers sitting nearby. He had a quiet word with the boss who led us through to a closed-off back room. Shep was a man people wanted to please.

I told him everything: the non-payment for drinks, Seamus allegedly passing brown envelopes, the lock-ins. Fintan could hang. I wasn’t prepared to turn a blind eye to reporters paying bent cops. Shep listened intently but showed not one flicker of surprise. When I wrapped up, he reached into his inside pocket, took out cigarettes and a gold lighter, lit up and leaned back to survey me.