On snowy days, the smell of horse manure became even more pungent. In lower-middle-class neighborhoods like Nore Street, public safety and sanitation were equally poor. Once Shade turned into this district, the winter streetscape he had seen near Regent Park vanished at once. What lay before him seemed like a muddy pit in a winter sewer, but this was the reality of life for the city's ordinary people.
The houses on Nore Street stood row upon row, packed tightly together. Pipes on walls with peeling plaster twisted together like long snakes. The population density here was especially high. On Wednesday morning, even though most men had gone out to work, the children running about and the women carrying infants, leading their second sons, and walking behind their firstborns still filled the place with the breath of life.
Generally speaking, the best place to ask about something was a nearby tavern. But Shade was still considering the possibility that this was a Military Intelligence Section Six trap, so he did not begin making inquiries directly. Instead, he circled around Nore Street, familiarizing himself with the surrounding terrain and the directions of the alley intersections.
At 10:20 in the morning, as Shade was walking down the street, his wallet suddenly fell into a pile of snow on the ground. He immediately picked it up, pinched the scattered coins out of the snow and put them back into the wallet, then continued forward and turned into an unnamed Garbage Alley not far away.
After Shade entered the alley, two young men crouching by the roadside, wearing gray flat caps and seeming as though they had not washed their faces in days, exchanged glances. Smiling, they followed him into the alley.
Even though the heavy snow covered the filth in the alley, the fermenting