From Hoops’s accent, a Brit with an unsettling undertone in his words that made him remember the incidents. In the checkout line of a computer store near Boulevard Anspach the day after he had accepted Hoops’s offer, he had noticed a man with a thickish neck and jug ears and wearing a black beret near the exit who had stared at him, though he thought nothing of it at the time.
Then buying flowers at the Grand Place a week later, another man, this one also stocky and sporting long sideburns and a black shawl, had watched him while in front of the tourist office. Omar had chalked that up to mere coincidence.
Not the third time. The third time featured a shopper last Thursday. A barrel-chested brute of a man in tennis shoes with black laces spent a lot of time in their little store, browsin
