‘Like being on a rollercoaster’: the man who caught Sicily’s last mafia boss

Lt Lucio Arcidiacono, who tracked Matteo Messina Denaro for eight years, speaks to the Guardian

Outside a private Palermo clinic at 8.20am on a Monday in January, dozens of plainclothes carabinieri are waiting in the driving rain. No one moves. The tension is high. A radio crackles. The target is on the move. It’s now or never. When the colonel gives the word, two carabinieri officers apprehend a well-dressed man sporting a sheepskin coat, a white wool hat and dark glasses.

“What’s your name?” asks the colonel, rushing in front of the suspect and blocking him at the exit of the clinic.