January 2006, on the edge of Playa de las Americas. Billy and Florence Robinson, a British couple who lived in the hills of San Miguel de Abona, spent the evening at a Japanese teppanyaki restaurant above the boutiques of the Safari shopping mall. They left at around 10.30pm. An hour later Florence was found dead beside her silver Mercedes, 300 metres from their villa. Billy was found the next morning across the back seat of his Porsche Cayenne near an industrial estate in Las Chafiras. He had been stabbed many times and his throat had been cut.
Nothing was taken. Billy's £100,000 gold watch was still on his wrist and Florence's diamond earrings were untouched. Whoever killed them did not want money. To the people who knew Tenerife's timeshare world, it was a message.
Goldfinger
John "Goldfinger" Palmer arrived in Tenerife in 1984, as police in Britain got ready to arrest him over the Brink's-Mat gold. He was later acquitted, but he did not wait around to find out. Spain had no extradition treaty with Britain, and the island gave him time and distance.
Born in Solihull in 1950, Palmer came from hard poverty. By his late teens he had a jewellery shop and by 20, the film says, he was making six figures. VAT gold scams made him rich, and after the 1983 Brink's-Mat robbery he was one of the men trusted to smelt the stolen bullion. That is where the name came from.
In Tenerife he took the timeshare idea he had watched boom in Florida and made it far more aggressive. Tourists were pressured into long contracts, often for properties that did not exist or that they would never own. He brought in young men from Wolverhampton, Teesside, Darlington and all over Britain: salesmen, doormen, bodybuilders and petty criminals. Some sold. Others collected. The line between salesman and gangster went quickly.
The bodyguard
In 1986 Palmer opened the Holiday Village, his headquarters on the island, with Florence Robinson on the front desk. He had also brought back a bodyguard he met in Libya the year before, a hard, disciplined man who would become the most important figure in the story. With him at Palmer's side, the business grew fast. The island picked up a new nickname, the White Island, and it was not for the beaches. Enforcers with names like Psycho Bill and the Sharks kept the money coming in.
That same year Spain revoked Palmer's passport. He fled through Lisbon to Brazil and was arrested there, but by 1987 the charges had collapsed and he was back in Tenerife. By the 1990s his old bodyguard was building his own power base, and the film describes a cold war between Palmer and his protégé. Security firms loyal to different bosses fought in clubs, car parks and villas.
Andrew Winder
In 1993 Andrew Winder, a bodybuilder from Darlington, was head of security for hundreds of apartments. A fight in an apartment in Port Royal, Los Cristianos ended with Winder stabbed and shot. He died. Another British man was released on bail after admitting he shot Winder in self-defence, and Spanish police said the killing was linked to a timeshare security feud.
North East papers ran stories of a feud between Winder and the Newcastle doorman Viv Graham, including a £10,000 contract and a £30,000 answer. The film is clear that there is no verified evidence for any of it. Winder's friends called him a big friendly giant who would help anyone.
Bobby's Bar
In 2000 the London face Dave Courtney was on holiday on the strip. A night at Lineker's bar and then Bobby's bar ended with a man beaten into a coma by a crowd of bodybuilders, and Courtney's group wrongly blamed. Men came looking for them. One of Courtney's friends had his head split open and shots were fired. By Courtney's account, they were lucky to get away.
The fall
In 2001 Palmer was found guilty in Britain of the largest timeshare fraud in British legal history: more than 20,000 victims and £30 million. He got eight years. By 2005 he was officially bankrupt.
The Robinsons had worked with Palmer, and after his conviction they set up their own company, Global World Travel. Their villa was heavily secured. It did not save them. Spain's organised crime unit was sent to the island, friends stopped talking, and the murders were never solved. People close to the couple said it was not Palmer's style.
In 2015 Palmer was found dead in the garden of his Essex home. It was first put down as a natural death. The post-mortem found two bullets in his chest. There have been no arrests.
The story carries on in Part 2.