Londoner William Moy, 43,who was shot five times as he sat in a busy cafe with his family. Other men just disappeared on the dusty roads that wind through the foothills of the Sierra Nevada. The body of at least one other drug dealer is believed to have been buried under cement in a Spanish villa's foundations.

Moy's death, which characterises the so-called settling of accounts or grudges between gangs, proved the final straw for the Spanish authorities. Extra British officers were drafted to what the locals call the Costa Nostra as the foreign drug syndicates began increasing orders to satisfy the huge market in the Balearics.