Madigan

The traps were all empty. Madigan strode around the worn, two mile path through woodland, across the warrens, down towards the chalk headlands that stretches along the seafront. Checking the traps, re- looping the twine for the snare, balancing the forked twig for the snap of the capture, re-siting some on new tracks.
He works with quick skill, taught by failure, practise and experimentation. He moves with a poacher’s quietness, an untaxing stride. He eavesdrops on the birds calling, warning one another of his approach.
Before stepping out from cover, he checks that no-one else is walking along the cliff top, then retrieves the rope he has hidden, staked securely beneath a briar, stop knots tied like fists at intervals along its length.
Madigan throws it over the cliff, then traverses down the chalk to the dark brown sand, inaccessible by any other means. A small curl of a cove, whose tides Madigan knows unconsciously, through the movement of the moon and the wind. 
He strips off, then slipping his canvas collecting bag across his chest, swims out to the oyster bed and dives, knife in hand, time and time again, while his breath allows, until the bag is full.
While he's drying himself, he notices something white, shinning from the sand, a few feet from the wash of the retreating waves.
Madigan doesn't know what it is, it looks to him like a tightly curled goat’s horn. But when he picks it up from the dark water filled dent in the sand, he is surprised by the weight, not expecting it to be stone. He examines it, it's of no use to him, maybe Mr Parker would like it.

The brass bell has made a dent in Mr Parker's door over the years, and Madigan's entrance carves it a little deeper, as he steps inside the junk shop of curiosities that Mr Parker likes to label, antiques. Mr Parker emerges from behind the Persian carpet he has hung up to curtain off his workshop. He levers off the strange telescoped glasses he uses to repair clockwork, replaces them with a small gold rimmed pair and smooths up the fringe of his white hair.
"Ah Madigan." Madigan nods and places the mystery object wrapped in a cheesecloth, onto the high oak counter. Mr Parker unwraps it. "Well, well well, Ammonoidea Cephalopod, an excellent example, unusually large and intact, where did you find it?"
"On the beach." Madigan is none the wiser for the explanation; Mr Parker swaps the glasses around again for closer examination. "What'do you say it is?" Madigan needs clarification.
"An ammonite. Fallen from the cliffs maybe, erosion, probably been there millions of years."
"I thought it were a goats horn." Mr Parker does not laugh at such innocent suggestions, he believes he has a duty to educate; the glasses are exchanged once more, Mr Parker's brown eyes shinning with excitement at the find.
"It was a mollusk, like an oyster, swam the seas many, many years ago. An animal like a squid in a shell lived in here, it's extinct now. A rare thing Madigan, rare indeed." Rare translates itself into 'worth a bob or two' in Madigan's quick mind.
"That's too heavy to swim."
"Indeed but this is the fossil of the animal. When it lived, its shell was probably as light as a shrimp, but it died, fell into the mud and over the millennia the mud solidified and became stone, so we see it as it is today."
Madigan didn't know about squid in shells, or shells becoming stone, he knew the price of stout, and the cost of peat. He tapped the ammonite.
"What'll you give me for it?" 
"Ah well." Mr Parker was temporarily fiscally embarrassed. He had a weakness for the cards, and an ineptitude too. "You visit at a most inauspicious moment, I'm afraid." He glanced around the shop, at times such as this, he would happily resort to barter. Madigan recognised the nervousness and sighed heavily, Mr Parker placated him with a wave of his hands, inviting Madigan to examine to shop's curiosities.
"No, no now then, I'm sure we can come to an amicable arrangement." Mr Parker retrieved a bundle of keys from their hook beneath the counter, and walked around the glass cabinets, muttering to himself. "There's a nice silver set, no use to you, and the Napoleonic medals, no no, field glasses?" Madigan shook his head, "Just so, now a pilgrims medal from Lourdes? Or a fertility statue from Benin? Not quite for you? There's a lovely crystal..."
"What's this?" Madigan was tapping on the glass at a wooden box. Mr Parker raised his eyebrows.
"That? Well it's mahogany," He swung open the door and passed the box to Madigan, "a keepsake box, for trinkets and the like. Would take cigars by the length of it." Madigan opened it, and a serenade began to play discordantly on the tiny drum of the concealed music box.
"Some of the resonators are broken." Mr Parker apologised but Madigan was entranced, he didn't hear Mr Parker scuttle away, "not sure what the tune is, what about this decanter?" The tune drew slowly to an end, and Madigan found the tiny key and rewound it. Mr Parker stopped in his search and returned to Madigan's side, he sensed a deal such as he couldn't have imagined.
"I remember this." Madigan spoke softly, lost in memory. Mr Parker gently removed the card label, pocketing it after a glance at the price.
"The box?" Madigan gave sour frown.
"The tune, my grandmother played it." Mr Parker was surprised, Madigan appeared to have been spawned by the woods, and the concept of him surrounded by family was disconcerting. Mr Parker's eyebrows rose further, when Madigan rewound the box a second time and commented. "On the harpsichord."
"Indeed?" Mr Parker waited for more information, but Madigan sank back into his usual taciturn demeanour. "Well, of course I'm happy if you are. The music box for the ammonite." Madigan nodded and Mr Parker held out his hand to seal the deal. 
"And £10 when I next come into town." Madigan held out his hand, slipping the box into his bag on top of the oysters, Mr Parker should have known he couldn't take advantage of the wily poacher, he sighed.
"£10." He agreed and they shook hands, rough to soft.

(For Part Two see 'Madigan and Mary'
Part Three 'Bridget'
Part Four 'Pennyright'
Part Five 'Michael Dooley'
Part Six 'The Wake'
Part Seven 'Geoffrey Cutler'
Part Eight 'Morgan'
Part Nine 'Lara Jonas'
Part Ten 'Hiroko Ito' 
Part Eleven 'The Representative of Nathaniel T Bliss'
Part Twelve 'Jackson Taylor'
Part Thirteen 'Eleonora Fernandez'
Part Fourteen 'Backstage - Karmina'
Part Fifteen 'Backstage - Maestro'
Part Sixteen 'Federico Sosa'
Part Seventeen 'Ieuan The Welshman'
Part Eighteen 'Howell Jones'
Part Nineteen 'The Spry'
Part Twenty 'Bethany' 
Part Twenty One Mme Florence Lefebvre )