The sleepless policeman

Nothing about this story shocks Sicilian-born Giuttari. The former head of Florence's Squadra Mobile - Flying Squad - he is only too aware of the evil that men do, particularly powerful establishment figures, and that corruption all too often seeps into the highest echelons of society.

So, says the 64-year-old, when we meet in a London hotel, it's vital that the allegations that some police officers in this country actually halted enquiries into claims of establishment child abuse, shutting down a surveillance operation because of the high-profile people involved, should be investigated urgently. Although, given its historic nature, who knows what the outcome will be, he continues, shrugging his shoulders, an eloquent gesture at the enormity of the task ahead of investigators.

You could be forgiven for thinking that Giuttari - who is now an international, best-selling crime writer and one of Europe's most translated authors alongside the Scandi noirists - had grabbed the plot of his latest novel, Death Under A Tuscan Sun, from such headlines, some of which allege that senior politicians are also suspected of murder. For murder most foul and the tangled web of high-society conspiracy is the theme of all Giuttari's novels, of which this is the seventh to be translated into English.

Death Under A Tuscan Sun is not the most stylishly written book but it tells a compelling story that has admirable integrity and real authenticity since Giuttari served 32 years as a police officer, working in Sardinia, Calabria and Naples, before joining Florence's anti-Mafia squad in the wake of the 1993 car bomb that killed five people, injured 48 others and destroyed three priceless works of art in the city's Uffizi gallery. The bombings continued in Rome and Milan, the mob's response to newly toughened prison conditions for convicted Mafiosi, says Giuttari.

A qualified lawyer, he was relentless in his pursuit of the Cosa Nostra and was until recently still monitoring Mafia activity for the Minister of the Interior in Rome, after putting more than 100 Mafiosi behind bars, although he warns that today it's the Calabrian 'Ndrangheta, not the Sicilian Cosa Nostra, that is Italy's greatest crime problem. "They have a global stranglehold on cocaine trafficking, affecting the country's finance and economy. We can only ever defeat them if we introduce uniform international legal standards," he declares.

During his leadership of Florence's Flying Squad, Giuttari also reopened the historic case of the serial killer, known as "the Monster of Florence," on whom Thomas Harris based Hannibal Lecter. It's a subject on which we shall gather evidence later as Giuttari helps with my enquiries.

His latest book again features his alter ego, Florentine Police Chief Michele Ferrara. A serial killer, bent on revenge, escapes from prison with a member of a Mafia family. A famous lawyer and his wife are murdered at their home in an exclusive gated community. The police discover a series of ghastly photographs of the bodies of nine women, mainly young girls. The beleaguered Ferrara and his crew must find the murderer and infiltrate the sinister satanic cult behind the killings. However, its members are among "the untouchables" at the top of Italian society, as well as an arrogant British aristocrat, Sir George Holley, who has long been Ferrara's nemesis.

"It is fiction, of course," says Giuttari, with a knowing smile, because it's fiction solidly based in fact. Therefore, it's a cracking read, especially for those interested in the minutiae of police procedures.

As Giuttari freely admits in vividly fractured English: "Ferrara is me; I am Ferrara. Yes, we share first names. But I woke one day and wrote down the name Ferrara. I have never told anyone this but some years later I was in Sicily, visiting the cemetery where family members are buried. I came across my grandmother's grave. Her name was Ferrara! I had completely forgotten that. Isn't it strange? I never knew her because she died before I was born - my mother, an artist and a milliner, was 42-years-old when she had me. So, it delighted me that I had subconsciously - is that the word? - paid this literary tribute to my mother's mother."

The fictional Ferrara is a workaholic as was, indeed is, Giuttari, who still rises at 5am every day to write. In his recent autobiography, Confesso Che Ho Indagato [I Confess That I Have Investigated], which came out in Italy at the end of February, he writes that he would stalk his quarry, collect clues, compare the evidence, then crack his head on a case until dawn, "when the eyes burn and your back hurts." He regularly worked 18-hour days.

This, confides Giuttari, is an Italian policeman's lot. He has actually subtitled his memoirs, "autobiography of a policeman uncomfortable" (our joint efforts at translating may have lost something). But he could also be describing Ferrara's life, because he gives his policeman as many sleepless nights as he himself suffered. He confesses today that when first faced with violent death, he was deeply troubled. "But you can't afford emotional involvement as a police officer. I survived because I learnt how to distance myself from seeing such sights. Terrible crimes were committed; I was determined to solve them."

As well as thinking alike, Giuttari and Ferrara look alike. Ferrara's long, dark hair is flecked with silver, as is Giuttari's, and they're both handsome chaps, elegantly suited and booted in Italian style. They have loving marriages to German wives: Petra is Ferrara's wife, while Guittari has been married to Christa since 1978. He dedicates all his books to her and she would be with him today if she were not recovering from a threatened thrombosis. He finds it hard to hide his distress as he tells me about her illness. It was for her sake that he left the police force because, like Ferrara, he was inundated with death threats. "It became dangerous", he acknowledges.

The two men also share a love of fine cigars and excellent coffee. Unfortunately, the Bloomsbury hotel where Giuttari is staying on a flying visit from his German home, which is peacefully situated "in the wild", a sequestered forest outside Frankfurt, serves possibly the worst coffee in London. Nonetheless, Florence, a ravishingly beautiful city, with a dark underbelly, will always be the most central character of his books.

Giuttari finds it impossible to write in the clamour of the city he loves passionately. He and his wife own a medieval house close to the Ponte Vecchio. "When the crime writer Jeffery Deaver visited us, he could not believe that an author lived in such a glorious, old building. But then he's an American!"

Talk of Giuttari's lovely home and his adopted city brings us to the so-called "Monster of Florence," who murdered 16 people - eight couples - from 1968 to 1985. They were all shot with the same Beretta pistol; the women's bodies were horribly mutilated. The killer took souvenirs. In 1994, police arrested a farm worker, Pietro Pacciani, who was later convicted, although he subsequently made a successful appeal.

Pacciani died in suspicious circumstances before being retried for the murders, and Giuttari believes he was murdered. "I know the killings were not the work of one man," he insists. In 1996, two men, known to Pacciani, were also sentenced for their part in the killings. A young doctor from a high-society family was found drowned in Umbria, confirming Giuttari's conviction that powerful members of the elite were involved, including the judiciary, as well as a high-profile journalist, Mario Spezi, an outspoken critic of the police investigation, who was eventually absolved of the crimes.

In 2010 Perugian prosecutor Giuliano Mignini - who later led the investigation into the Amanda Knox case - and Giuttari were both charged with abuse of office for arresting Spezi. The ruling was overturned the following year. "It's a disgrace that the victims and their suffering families will never know the truth," says Giuttari. "I wanted justice for them, that is what drove me because I know who the guilty men are."

Tragically, the case of the "Monster" will remain unresolved for ever, maintains Giuttari. "Yes, yes, yes!" he exclaims when I ask him if he uses Ferrara to solve those cases that defeated him. "That is exactly what I do in my books. It's very satisfying being able to bring so many criminals - even if they are semi-fictional - to justice." And with that, "the Italian Michael Connelly" sets off in search of a desperately needed caffeine hit and a cigar.

Death Under A Tuscan Sun, by Michele Giuttari, Little, Brown, £14.99