Giles Tremlett's Spain Dispatch

Senora Corbacho came back from the bank, her bag clasped in one hand and a stranger tailing her. While she hung about chatting to the doorman in the hall of our building the stranger wandered in, looking as though he was heading for one of the doctors' offices on the first floor.

He was smartly dressed, not an immigrant (these things matter to our door man) and therefore not deemed worth challenging.

When Senora Corbacho, who must be in her late 60s, got to her home on the second floor - four below us - he was there waiting, pistol in hand, demanding her bag.

She then did what everybody else I know who has been held at pistol or knife-point seems to have done, which is the exact opposite to what you are supposed to do. She screamed, she clung tightly on to her bag and she cried out for help.

The doorman, who had already begun wondering about the visitor, started up the stairs. There he came eye to eye with the business end of the man's pistol. Understandably, he stayed flattened against the wall of the stair well as the gunman ran past. But then, again contravening elemental rules of self-preservation, he set off in pursuit, only to find the gun trained on him once more. "I told you to stay there or you'll get shot!" the man shouted.

Remarkably, Senora Corbacho was found to be still in possession of her bag and her life. Was it a fake pistol? Probably. Did the appearance of a gunman on our staircase freak us out? Yes.

Just a few months ago I chided my elderly, eccentric downstairs neighbour for claiming that a band of Latin American assassins were after her. Admittedly, her fantasy is still far-fetched and, by Senora Corbacho's account, our local pistol-wielders are 100% Spanish, but gun crime and senseless murders in Madrid are now too big a phenomenon to ignore.

This year they are set to top the 100 mark - not the worst record in Europe, but a big departure for a normally tranquil city. The government has even sacked the local police chief and brought in a new "supercop", former Barcelona police chief Miguel Angel Fernandez, to stem the flow of blood.

Stories begin to pop up of near encounters with the new violence. A colleague still shivers when she recalls the screams she heard when, on a street just behind the parliament, a Greek tourist was stabbed to death by a bag thief.

Of all this year's rash of murderers, the one who has captured Madrilenos' attention most has been the "playing card killer". He kept the city on the hop until an ex-army corporal stumbled drunkenly into a police station last week and started spilling the beans.

Alfredo Galan, 26, said he had shot six people "to show how easy it was". The victims were chosen at random and, after an ace of chalices from the Spanish card pack was coincidentally found by the body of one, he said he had started leaving cards as his signature. The next victim got a two, the one after that got a three and so it would have gone on had he not drunk too much and decided to admit the crimes. When he woke up with a hangover the next morning, he apparently denied it all. But police are convinced they have their man, and there are reports that he has started bragging about several other murders.

Could the playing card killer have been the man who walked into our building? The description fits, but it is doubtful - robbery was not his modus operandi.

Has all this provoked a collective fit of paranoia? Not really. Even Senora Corbacho was relatively calm as she recounted the tale in the lift the other day.

Perhaps it is too hot, or Madrilenos are just no good at building up mass hysteria. All the same, I'll be looking at who's walking behind me next time I leave the bank.