That all changed on the evening of 4 August, when a squad of about 40 police officers from the Fugitive Assets Search Team (FAST) and the drugs squad of the federal police descended on the modest four-storey house where he lived in a third-floor apartment. Romano was led away in handcuffs with a bag over his head, and it was revealed that he was one of Italy’s 100 most dangerous fugitives.

It turns out the quiet neighbour is looking at a 15-year jail sentence for drug trafficking and is one of the bosses of the Neapolitan Camorra, one of the three organisations people are referring to when they use the word “Mafia”. His real name is Vittorio Pirozzi.

Pirozzi, the prosecutor’s office said, has been living here for at least two years under the assumed name of Romano, using a fake ID bought for €50. According to Pirozzi’s statements, he lived alone in the apartment after living for six months in Jette, where he got up in the morning and baked traditional Neapolitan pastries which he would then deliver to customers in an unnamed restaurant.

Near his apartment is the Art Nouveau Italian restaurant Le Stelle, and the staff said they had bought pastiera (ricotta cake flavoured with or- ange blossom water) from him once, for their own consumption.

It’s all a far cry from Pirozzi’s past experience as a capo, one of the lieutenants of the Mariano family, who controlled the Chiaia area of Naples through the 1980s. At the end of the decade, he was convicted of extorting protection money from small businesses in the area, before stepping up his activity in drugs, for which he was sentenced in absentia in 2003. By the time the verdict was handed down, however, Pirozzi had vanished.

Two years later he was traced to Málaga, Spain, but got wind of danger and disappeared again. Police have been keeping track of his wife’s communications and noticed that Pirozzi contacted her regularly, always from a different phone they were unable to trace. Each time, he would conclude his call with a code of letters and numbers. It turned out that the code referred to a telephone number and a date. Police in Italy figured out that the number was that of a Belgian mobile phone and began to close in.

By coincidence, Pirozzi’s wife was also in Brussels last week when the cat-and-mouse game came to an end: she was visiting for her husband’s 58th birthday, which was last week.

Italian interior minister Roberto Maroni called the arrest “an important step in the fight against the Camorra.” According to Italian police, most of the bosses of the Mariano family – with the exception of Marco Mariano himself – are now in custody. Italy now has two weeks to apply for Pirozzi’s extradition.

Pirozzi’s lawyer said that his client would oppose extradition and would apply to serve his 15-year sentence here in Belgium. Pirozzi admits that he was in contact with members of the Camorra but denies he was ever a member or a capo. “It’s not the fact that meeting someone from the Camorra on the streets of Naples makes you a member of the organisation,” said lawyer Hamid El Abouti.