Outer city, East of Eilings, 121A Cork Street.
It was night in Old Turin, and the dark whales swam slowly in the night sky as usual, then cast huge columns of light to peer into the sleeping city.
Hot steam gushed from under the well cover, and Lorenzo ambled out of the white tide.
He looked well, but his face was pale, and he walked slowly, leaning on his stick.
Lorenzo escaped before the next troopers arrived, but the intricacies of downtown saved him, and judging by his familiar movements as he ran, it wasn't the first time he'd been chased.
Only this time he failed to escape smoothly, can only say that the mob had to admire the ability of the hands, they actually did a nail gun out of the dense barrage of Lorenzo's body position was still hit, a finger long iron nail shot into his waist, fortunately only skin trauma.
Thanks to the day and night moisture, the clothes of the people of old Turin were always damp, so Lorenzo liked the dark so that people could not tell whether his clothes were water stains or blood stains.
After a long walk, he finally reached the door.
121A Cork Street.
This remote location is a new area developed in recent years, so the house price is very cheap, but although cheap, but not Lorenzo this detective can afford to buy, and then in the introduction of the butcher, he found a good rental.
Lorenzo, not daring to knock, gently opened the door and cautiously walked in. The first floor is owned by the landlord, Madame Van Rood, a very hardcore old lady, who is said to have been a female soldier and one of the most heroic air cavalry.
She often brags with Lorenzo about the glorious stories of her youth, and her favorite is the story of how she met her husband.
I still remember that at the end of the Glorious War, the whole Old Dunling was in turmoil, when Mrs. Van der Lud returned to Old Turin as a wounded soldier to recover, at that time there was a riot inside the old Dunling, she as a wounded soldier can only emergency.
Lorenzo guessed that she had met some officer and fallen in love, but what happened was that Madame Van der Luce came down from the sky as an air trooper with a rope, shot off the head of an enemy, and captured one, and the unfortunate prisoner was her future husband.
"You married the enemy?" Lorenzo was stunned.
"He is just a young man who has not learned well, and under my discipline he has improved.
"What were you thinking? You're fighting! And come back with a husband?"
"Lorenzo, you're young. Do you know love at first sight?"
'she answered, with a glow in her old cloudy eyes.
It's a hardcore love story, a heavily armed female hero falls from the sky, she should have shot the hapless kid, but in the hell of love at first sight is unable to pull the trigger, like a primitive man, a stick to measure his head, when he wakes up only two choices, either take the woman in front of him, or be executed for treason.
What happened after the marriage was unknown to Lorenzo, and Lorenzo had questioned Madame van der Luce's words, but when he remembered how hard she had drawn her gun when she owed the rent, Lorenzo stopped talking.
There were two doors on either side of the living room. One belonged to Lorenzo and the other to his roommate, a very ordinary man, a mechanic by profession, who often worked overtime in the factory.
The lights in the room weren't on, and it looked like the hapless mechanic was working overtime again.
When he entered his own room, Lorenzo's heart was truly relieved. With his clothes neatly on the hanger, he carries the medical kit into the bathroom, which is one of the reasons he likes it here, the private bathroom, it's amazing.
As the warm water fell, he was bare-chested, carefully cleaning up his wounds.
The wound was not large, and after careful cleaning Lorenzo began to disinfect it, knowing that most of the weapons made by the thugs in the lower town were not lethal, but what was attached to them was lethal.
In that filthy shithole, you never know what gutter a knife or sword was in the night before.
The era of war has passed, and now it is disease that kills people, and most people die from infections after injuries, and these people have no basic medical awareness.
An artifact was once all the rage in Downtown, a rusty metal weapon that Lorenzo called the Blade of Tetanus, a place full of black doctors who came from nowhere and basically died when infected.
After taking care of the wound, Lorenzo slowly stood up, tired and urging him to sleep.
Casually glance over the mirror, eyes out of the periphery of the eyes see the inside reflected with a hideous twisted black lines.
It's a tattoo, a black tree growing along Lorenzo's spine, and it's a very strange feeling to look at the tattoo, as if Lorenzo itself is a human skin, and the iron branches and thorns hold up the whole body, but it's like a black snake twisting around this mortal body.
Eerie and dark, as if that black led to another world
The tree that holds up the world.
Lorenzo seemed to have made a habit of ignoring it, merely glancing at it.
"Tattoos are nice."
Suddenly there was a sound, inside the room.
Beastly alertness cuts Lorenzo's nerves like a razor, killing is rolling in his gray-blue eyes, and the man sits on the sofa in a delicate mask, his movements are full of random, as if he made himself at home.
"I could have killed you."
Lorenzo was not in a high mood, and after realizing the identity of the man, his hand reached out from the dead corner of the man's sight, above which he held a gun filled with ammunition.
It was one of Lorenzo's habits to hide his sword everywhere in this small room, and if anyone intruded, even Lorenzo could pull the weapon from behind the towel after wiping his ass and shoot him in the head with a gun.
"It seems like you don't really like people looking at your tattoos, but it's nice, it's artistic." Shrike watched Lorenzo put on his coat and then sat down opposite him.
"I just don't like being watched by a man all the time."
Lorenzo shot back mercilessly, then put his pistol aside and looked at his employer.
"So what is the evening visit of the noble shrike?"
Instead of answering Lorenzo, the Shrike picked up the tin box nearby, and as he opened it, the aroma of tobacco hit his face
close.
"I suppose your markings mean something."
It was Lorenzo's cigarette case, and even though Lorenzo had his annoyance written all over his face, Butchell kept going through it, judging.
"This is.... Eggplant?"
Pick up the red coated cigarette, the shrike smelled a little surprised.
"I didn't think you'd recognize it."
Lorenzo was surprised that the shrike could recognize the nightshade, for he thought that the Shrike was the kind of man who should be obsessed with money and wine.
"I've had a bunch of shamans from the Land of plenty lately, and they're talking about gods and demons and gods and goddesses.
"Said the Shrike, continuing to turn through his cigarette case.
"Their leaders wanted to eat downtown, so when they came to see me, they told me a lot about shamanic witchcraft, like this manna, and they said that smoking this stuff makes the user a so-called 'psychic,' and then the user triggers the 'vision' to see things that they shouldn't see."
With a little playfulness in her eyes, she looked at Lorenzo.
"How long have you had this thing?"
It's none of your business, Shrike."
Lorenzo responds to Shrike's questions with rare toughness.
"Well, well, what about this cigarette? "
The butchman knew Lorenzo's habits. Most of his cigarettes were mixed with waking herbs, but this cigarette was special at the moment. It had a black line drawn on it, and there was only one.
It gave off a chilling sensation, as if it contained a deadly toxin.
"Toxic. Don't touch it if you don't want to die." Lorenzo patiently explained to Shrike.
"Well.... I suppose this is your instrument of murder?"
"Leaving marks on the instruments of murder?"
Lorenzo taunted Shrike mercilessly, even though a few hours earlier the patron had nearly shot him in the head.
"That's the smoke that was left for me, the neurotoxin that would put me into a coma, and then my heart would stop in a dream."
It was the instrument of his suicide, but Lorenzo said it effortlessly, as if it were not his life that had died
Shrike was a little stunned, as if he did not expect this cynical person to have such a cruel side to himself, seeing the shrike's expression, Lorenzo then said slowly.
"You've been downtown long enough to know that there are things worse than death, so sometimes dying is the right thing to do."
Death is only a moment, but pain can be a lifetime.
"That's a profound lesson in life."
Stunned a little shrike praised.
"So, did Lorenzo Holmers experience the 'better to die' thing?"
Like a snake showing its fangs, the shrike sat with a smile on his face.
What awaited him was the black muzzle of the gun rising quickly, and Lorenzo's gray-blue eyes were cold.
"You said, Shrike, that to come to Inlvig, to come to Old Dunling, is a new life, and a new life is to say goodbye to the past, isn't it?"
"You look really angry." "I'm just curious what this man was like before he changed his name to Lorenzo Holmers, but you don't seem to want to tell me."
This was not the first time this conversation had taken place; since Lorenzo's arrival in Old Turin six years earlier, Shrike had tried to dig up his past more than once.
Every person who starts a new life should have a past, but Lorenzo is different, no matter how the Shrike investigates, he can not understand his history, as if he appeared out of thin air.
"Don't be angry, I still trust you, after all, you are my iron spine." If you still don't want to talk about it, let's change the subject."
Shrike does not care about Lorenzo's offense, and the two of them are very special, even though they are employed, they are mostly equal in status.
'Tell us about the progress of today's case. Thanks to you, the Sualan Hall has begun to pay attention."
With that delicate revolver taken out of his arms and pointed at Lorenzo, Shrike smiled kindly under half his mask, and no one knew whether the last bullet had been filled in at this moment.
Say private talk business, really, if no one can replace him, Shrike really want to kill this big detective.