The Guardia Civil yesterday arrested 36 year old Irishman Tony Armstrong, implying that he was involved with the deaths of two fellow Irishmen whose bodies were uncovered in Catral

Sources stated that Armstrong had rented the warehouse where the bodies of Shane Coates and Stephen Sugg were discovered In Spain they hooked up with other Irish and British criminals on the run and became involved with Moroccan thugs in drug running operations from North Africa via Spain to Ireland.

They started to throw their weight around, as they had in Dublin, but there were soon mutterings that instead of being an asset to their new cronies they were becoming a liability.

Other expatriate criminals feared the high-profile swaggering duo were threatening to upset their low-key but lucrative lifestyle.

According to well-informed expat sources on the Costa Blanca the pair had written their own death warrants.

They vanished suddenly in January 2004. Initially, there were suspicions they had staged their own disappearance because they had been threatened by rival gangsters.

But whispers started reaching the ears of detectives back home that they had been murdered