A boozed up policeman blabbed details of a Thornton Heath murder case while on a bender with a pal of the victim - who then tried to blackmail him, a court heard.

The Met Police officer, who can't be named for legal reasons, woke up in a park the next morning with little memory of what had happened, the court was told.

When asked in court how far gone he was that night on a scale of one to 10, one being sober and ten falling down drunk, he replied: "Twenty."

Lewis Adams, 27, only met the officer that night in Brighton, East Sussex, last July, Croydon Crown Court was told.

They ended up visiting "pubs, clubs and casinos" - and discussed a south London murder case the officer had worked on, jurors heard Adams "formed a bond" with the officer, whom he had not met before that night, in an effort to later blackmail him into "getting rid of evidence" in case he was a suspect in, the court was told.

Jonathan Edwards, prosecuting, told the jury that Adams sent a series of text messages to the officer, threatening to tell his colleagues he had been discussing a murder investigation.

Mr Edwards said: "This case is about a series of text messages that this defendant sent to a serving police officer asking him to destroy evidence in an ongoing police investigation.

"The defendant was thereby intending to interfere with an ongoing investigation and so was perverting the course of justice.

"The Police Constable at the time had some personal issues and was suffering from depression - this made him vulnerable.

"He would deal with bouts of depression by taking alcohol."

The officer said his first memory of Adams was the pair being refused entry to a hotel.

After going to the off-licence, he said they went to the beach together.

He said: "We went to the off-licence to buy cigarettes and a bottle of gin or brandy.

"We were drinking out of the bottle caps.

"We were talking about people in the area of Thornton Heath, jobs I had dealt with and the people I knew.

"I was working in investigative gun crime and knife crime."

Mr Edwards asked: "Did you mention a victim of serious crime?"

The officer said: "Yes. A lad that got shot three years ago.

"I had dealt with him before and had been in contact with him."

When asked why he deleted his call history after he received the text the next day, the officer said: "I wasn't thinking straight."

Mr Edwards continued: "The PC had never met this individual before, but it seems that the defendant got to know a number of things about the PC and his job over the course of the evening.

"This was the defendant attempting to form a common bond with the officer in order to gain his confidence and to cause him to make unguarded disclosures about his police business.

He said: "They went to a casino, the officer was clearly worse for wear as he fell, cracking his head on the ground.

"The defendant had been working quite hard to gain as much information has he could.

"The next thing the PC remembers is waking up in a small park in Brighton at 10am. He was alone and his bank card was missing."

The court heard Adams sent a text a text to the officer while he was on the train home telling him he he had his bank card.

The officer said he would cancel it and that Adams could throw it away, to which it is alleged Adams texted "we should meet soon".

Mr Edwards said: "The PC then deleted his call history.

"The PC next received a text message from the same number around mid afternoon on July 18.

"It read 'you need to do me a favour'. They said there was a video of his warrant card due to be put on YouTube."

The prosecutor read out a number of the texts to the jury.

He said: "'Are you going to do something to help my nephew or things are going to go downhill for you.

"'Your colleagues know you have been discussing a murder investigation, do we need to let the cat out of the bag?

"'Find out what's going on with this case and find out what they have and get rid of it, get rid of the evidence."

The officer handed himself in to the police's Directorate of Professional Standards.

The court heard after police raided Adams' flat in Croydon, south London, they found the phone with the number that had been used to contact the officer.

Adams, 27, of Croydon, denies perverting the course of justice.

The trial continues.