A CAREER criminal accused of the murder of a gangland Mr Big has told a jury his co-accused handed him a gun minutes after a mob enforcer was shot dead.

Steven Boyle, 35, suggested he had never been a 'grass' but his long-time partner in crime, Mark Fellows, 38 and from Orford, tricked him into being part of the murder of notorious Liverpool gangster and mob fixer John Kinsella in May.

The murder came three years after the killing of Paul Massey, 55, another notorious criminal who was sprayed with bullets from an Uzi machine gun outside his Salford home in July 2015.

Both men died as a result of being associated with a gang, the A Team, at 'war' with a splinter group in Salford the two accused were attached to.

Boyle is accused of being the 'spotter' or lookout and acting as back-up for both gangland assassinations carried out by the gunman Fellows, Liverpool Crown Court heard.

Relatives of both victims gasped in the public gallery as Boyle, in the witness box, claimed he had been duped by his co-defendant Fellows, who sat in the dock surrounded by prison guards.

Boyle is accused of 'spotting' Kinsella, who was walking his dogs with his partner, Wendy Owen, near his home in Rainhill, Merseyside, on the morning of May 5 this year.

Fellows is alleged to have then shot him in the back before blasting him twice in the head from close range with a Webley handgun.

But Boyle told the jury he had gone to the area in his Renault Clio car merely to pick up drug money from Fellows, who was on a bicycle.

Boyle said: "He came over, passed me a backpack bag through the window and left within seconds. I opened the bag."

Peter Wright QC, defending, asked the witness: "What was in it?"

"A gun," the defendant replied.

He added: "I could not believe it, I had had that thrown on me like that."

Boyle said he would not have agreed to handle a firearm and Mr Wright reminded the jury that Boyle had previously served a jail sentence for possessing a loaded gun, silencer and ammunition.

Boyle continued: "Pacifically (sic) for that reason, had I got another one it would have been twice as long.

"I shouted to Mark 'What the **** are you doing?'"

Boyle said his co-accused cycled away without another word so later he used an 'Encro' phone - an encrypted phone used by criminals so police cannot uncover communications - to contact Fellows, who asked "Where is it?"

Boyle added: "I assumed, instead of picking the money up, it was always going to be a gun. How can you do that to your own friend? He probably knew what the response was going to be."

Arrested for the murder of Kinsella, he told officers he "probably know more things about it than I should" but if he talked he and his family would need police protection.

He said the criminal 'code' is 'don't grass'.

He added: "It would be me if everything's gone wrong, because I'm the one that grassed people up."

Mr Wright asked: "Have you ever been a grass before in your long criminal career?"

"No," Boyle replied.

He denied even knowing Kinsella and said he played no part in the earlier murder of Massey.

Boyle, from Heywood, Greater Manchester, and Fellows, of Warrington, deny the murder of Massey on July 26 2015 and the murder of Kinsella and attempted murder of Miss Owen on May 5 2018.

The trial continues.