Everand Logo

Welcome to Everand!

  • Discover millions of ebooks, audiobooks, and so much more with a free trial

    Only $9.99/month after trial. Cancel anytime.

    The Hollow King
    The Hollow King
    The Hollow King
    Ebook225 pages3 hours

    The Hollow King

    By Greg Tuck

    ()

    Read preview

    About this ebook

    Political journalist, Harry Constance receives some information from an ex fellow Oxford scholar, now UK MP, Martin King. The information could be enough to bring down the UK government if true. However, all they have is a name, an event and a date. To find out more they enlist the aid of a security expert, a businessman and a retired civil servant. As more is uncovered, they realise the precarious position they are in and the ease that they could be dealt with. Dead ends, false trails and threats lay in their path. All they have is their own expertise and dogged determination. The clock is ticking. Even if they find out what is about to happen, have they got time to stop it?

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherGreg Tuck
    Release dateMay 31, 2022
    ISBN9781005789374
    The Hollow King
    Author

    Greg Tuck

    I am a former primary teacher and principal, landscape designer and gardener and now a full time author living in Gippsland in the state of Victoria in Australia. Although I write mainly fictional novels, I regularly contribute to political blogs and have letters regularly published in local and Victorian newspapers. I write parodies of songs and am in the process of writing music for the large number of poems that I have written.

    Read more from Greg Tuck

    Related to The Hollow King

    Related ebooks

    Mystery For You

    View More
    View More

    Related podcast episodes

    Related articles

    • Article

      Why We Write

      Aug 12, 2020

      AND WHY WE STOP THIS kind of thing used to thrill me—a few dozen writers huddled in a dark bar, taking turns at the mic, hooting and cheering one another afterward. I could sense the way it felt to most of them—nourishing, holy, the air charged with

      7 min read

    • Article

      Dave Barry 2020

      Sep 20, 2019

      Dave Barry 2020
      12 min read

    • Article

      Shut The Hell Up

      Jun 20, 2020

      Shut The Hell Up
      4 min read

    • Article

      Robin Ince Is On The Road

      Jun 10, 2024

      I am a hypocrite. I try my best. My best is not good enough. All the above are true statements. We have 24-hour-a-day access to stories of the worst of humanity. Even then, there are many atrocities that will go unreported because they are not politi

      2 min read

    • Article

      It Takes Blood And Guts

      Nov 21, 2020

      I’m sitting on Skin’s terrace in Ibiza, soaking up the late summer sunshine via the magic of the internet. It’s the closest I’ve come to travel since the start of the panny danny and looking out my window at the dark Edinburgh sky, I’ll take all the

      6 min read

    • Article

      Author Ladee Hubbard On Love, Family And Resilience

      Mar 22, 2022

      Ladee Hubbard, author of the short story collection The Last Suspicious Holdout, talks about love, family, resilience and grief in the Black community.

      5 min read

    • Article

      André De Shields, Theatre God

      Nov 25, 2019

      André De Shields, Theatre God
      11 min read

    • Article

      ‘You Asked Me Questions That I’ve Never Asked Myself. That May Seem Funny, But Part Of Being Keir Is Just Ploughing On ’ The Man Likely To Be Britain’s Next PM

      Jun 28, 2024

      ‘You Asked Me Questions That I’ve Never Asked Myself. That May Seem Funny, But Part Of Being Keir Is Just Ploughing On ’ The Man Likely To Be Britain’s Next PM
      16 min read

    • Article

      The Hard Road To Equality

      Sep 1, 2019

      The Hard Road To Equality
      9 min read

    • Article

      Brain Teaser

      Oct 15, 2019

      Brain Teaser
      5 min read

    • Article

      Nothingism

      Mar 1, 2019

      Nothingism
      11 min read

    • Article

      Bird’s Words

      Feb 7, 2022

      Bird’s Words
      3 min read

    • Article

      A Message To The Class Of 2020

      May 17, 2020

      A Message To The Class Of 2020
      6 min read

    • Article

      CRUEL Intentions

      Feb 28, 2021

      CRUEL Intentions
      3 min read

    • Article

      A Year in Reading: Ismail Muhammad

      Dec 10, 2017

      For me, 2017 was the year that journalism nearly supplanted fiction as my reading life’s dominant genre. I started the year in a state of alarm at Donald Trump’s inauguration. Shortly after he took office, I resolved to be a good, engaged citizen aft

      5 min read

    Related categories

    Reviews for The Hollow King

    0 ratings

    0 ratings0 reviews

    What did you think?

    Tap to rate

    Review must be at least 10 words

      Book preview

      The Hollow King - Greg Tuck

      Chapter 2

      The cough came again and was somewhat insistent. I turned and said bluntly, You either need to get that seen to, or learn how to more politely interrupt people's conversations. You may have gone to a public school and then a private college, but etiquette must have been a class that you skipped at both. Or is that silver spoon you have still in your mouth tickling your throat?

      I see that you are still peddling your poor downtrodden roots drivel, the voice replied, Do you think that I could have a private word with you?

      I turned to Rachel and said, And this is where you show your own social graces and you discreetly piss off. We wouldn’t like Martin here to think that we journalists didn't know our place and have the appropriate deferential manners.

      She was caught a bit short, not knowing what to say. That may have been because the man who had spoken so eloquently before cast a spell over her by flashing his perfect teeth through the aura that surrounded him. It could have been that I had spoken with so much familiarity and disapproval to the same man. I got the feeling that she was going to embarrass herself by opening her mouth and call him by his wrong title or just giggle like a teenager. He had that sort of presence with women. I hastily pulled a cake from my pocket wrapped neatly in a serviette and asked her to taste test it for me. She was so dumbstruck that she just took it and Martin Aloysius Abernathy King, the Earl of some unpronounceable place, and I moved out of the tent.

      Couldn't help but overhear that you didn't like my speech. Was it something that I said? he asked.

      I ignored his play on words and answered honestly, Your script writers are controlling what you are saying these days. You might as well be a cardboard cut-out or a ventriloquist's dummy. You were far more interesting and said so much more with much fewer words before you became famous. Why not record it elsewhere and just lip sync it to the crowd? The passion doesn't come across anymore. I don't think many of your fans notice as you appear to be catering for the dull and boring group you are attracting these days. And what is with this nervously looking around all the time. That's not what we learnt in debating. You hold your opponents' or audiences' focus and force them to look away. That's how you assert your dominance and force them to take on board what you are saying. There, I have just given my critique of your performance, but that's not what you are wanting to discuss with me. You were always your harshest critic. You didn't need my advice. I saw in your eyes just then that I was pretty spot on though with what I said. Although I must admit that in the old days you would have mounted a spirited defence of your speech whether you believed it or not. So, what gives? What's happened or is happening? And why are you turning to me of all people?

      This is all off the record. It has to be. That should be enough to get you interested. Are you interested or are you thinking that there is nothing to be gained here? The thing is that I know that if you agreed to that condition, your ethics and honesty will hold true.

      So, I replied, mentally cursing myself for adopting Rachel’s speech pattern, You throw a lure out there and try to reel me in. I’m not biting. As far as honesty and ethics go, I wasn’t sure that you knew the meanings of those words.

      It was obvious by the look on his face that he had no idea whether I was referring to his profession or the woman who had left me for him all those years ago. For a man who could tell an uproarious joke absolutely deadpan, his facial expressions in this conversation were dead give-aways. Something had definitely happened. I didn’t know why he turned to me and what he wanted me to do. It was all very strange.

      Annette was a long time ago. She made her own decisions. She left you and she left me and we were both the poorer for it. I didn’t ask her to leave you and I begged her to stay with me. I bet you didn’t know that. She said that she was a free spirit and so I guess she was.

      His response was tinged with remorse and still seemed quite raw. I regretted my choice of words. Annette was, as he said, a free spirit and that is what had attracted me to her and that was why her leaving still rankled. I was not good enough to hold her and I guess neither was he. She had disappeared out of both of our lives and probably out of so many others’ lives by now. From the wistful look on his face, I now knew Martin had been hurt as much as me and, like me, probably had no idea where she was now. What he wanted to tell me, I was sure now, was political. His life was all about politics. I had admired him, I guess, when he was younger for standing above it, but now he had been sucked into the vortex of it. He was no longer a political activist whose ideals wouldn’t let him participate in the messiness of day-to-day political bickering. He had succumbed and become tainted by it. That was what was missing in the speech he gave, the earnestness of youth. What had replaced it was cynicism and compromise. His oratory skills raised him above others of his ilk but he was still part of the flotsam and jetsam of society who treated democracy as a game to be played and won at any cost. I was to learn why much later, but I felt disappointed for him and in him. The crowd that had gathered today needed to not just hear the usual platitudes that smothered their own passions. They needed to be energised into action, even if that action was only thinking and reflecting. Martin had the capacity to do that but had been constrained. He was the sort of person that the status quo always tried to rein in when, in reality, the country would have been better placed in the long term if he was given free rein to say what he thought.

      You will need to tell me more before you buy my silence. That’s what you are doing, isn’t it? I am not a counsellor, nor a sounding board. If there is a story, I’ll write it. If it is a story that you won’t let me write, then find someone else. That’s as simple and direct as I can make it. I’ve been at all your recent press conferences and you invited me here today. I was coming anyway. I know that something is going on and I will find out. If you want to offer a scoop to someone else and trust them enough to keep you out of it, be my guest. I don’t think you’ll find someone who will protect you completely and be able to find and write something as in depth as I can. I am happy to be proven wrong though.

      The ball was firmly back in his court. It was a ploy that I used with most sources. I don’t guarantee immunity unless I have some details. If they wish to seek immunity and offer Queen’s evidence, then that is something for the legal system. I am not in the habit of protecting potential criminals. That is not what I do and I make it very clear at the outset. I think Martin probably already knew that, but what he had given had only made me curious rather than whetting my appetite. After all he had approached me. He may have gotten word that I was sniffing around and perhaps he was trying to stop me in my tracks. I doubted the latter though as he knew me too well. Any roadblock or detour would not stop me going in the direction that I was determined to go. What he had to say therefore was probably very important. If it involved the Home Office then I wouldn’t touch it with a barge pole, a very very long barge pole. You don’t mess around with the Home Office boys.

      To my mind it was bound to be more political than anything. The games that were played behind the scenes in the Houses of Parliament were quite deadly especially to one’s character and reputation. It wasn’t my usual place of work, but if the bits of the story I had was added to by Martin’s and it led to the hallowed halls of the Palace of Westminster, then that’s where I’d go.

      You would have thought that someone with a title would be on the Tory side of the chamber. Nor was he on the Labor side perhaps trying to be vastly different to his parents. He was one of the few independents and he waved that flag proudly. He was not made for the pettiness of party rooms. Nor was he one who would gladly toe any party line and ask the trite and trivial questions demanded of them when the Houses sat. His audience was his electorate but had become more widespread. He spoke his mind without the reserve that was meant to be shown by the middle class, without the haughtiness of the upper class, nor with the angry diatribe of those representing the lower classes. He spoke clearly calmly and above all honestly without the political spin of those who were around him. However, he wouldn’t describe himself as a non-conformist, nor a trendsetter. If there was something that needed to be said, he would say it calmly and clearly in words that people understood. At least he used to and that’s what attracted the crowds and made him a national figure despite being just one of the six hundred and fifty odd people, and some of them were very odd, in the Commons. Perhaps if I ever wrote about him, that oddity would make a great headline. The Uncommon Man in the Commons.

      Chapter 3

      He spoke with a plum in his mouth, enunciating every word with precision and just the right amount of dissonance. I must admit that my first meeting with Martin Aloysius Abernathy King hadn't gone down well at all. We were in the first group that met together to be told the do's and don'ts by the welcoming administrative staff at the university college. He nonchalantly, almost displaying a touch of boredom, kept glancing at his gold Rolex as he waited for the mini lecture to end. Immaculately dressed down for the occasion, he didn't even bother to look at others in the group.

      I, on the other hand, was totally agog with what was being said. It was all new and terribly strange to me, someone who had managed to survive living in one of the poorest areas of Birmingham but had showed enough aptitude to be continually awarded scholarships throughout my youth. I was about two years younger than those around me. My voice had just broken and acne had made my face ghastly, or so I thought. Luckily shaving was a couple of years away yet. I was in a foreign land and I was trying to pick up clues as to how the local inhabitants acted. I carried with me the inbuilt prejudice against those who appeared to be from higher social classes, which was just about everyone else. However, I already had begun to develop a dislike of this Earl of somewhere or other, whose father was a known benefactor of the college, a point that was made more than once by the head of administration who had first addressed us and had brought Martin forward to speak briefly, an act that I was later to learn was hated by him, but cleverly masked by some indifference acted out. The working-class youth, me and the snobby young man, him, had their first meeting, but as much as I knew who he was, I was sure that he didn't even know of my existence let alone acknowledge it. I half expected some nasty put down of my physical and financial circumstances by him and was ready with some quick-witted responses if he tried it, and fists if those didn't work. What was even harder to take was his look that was as if I wasn't even there. That hurt.

      We shared tutorials and lectures during that first year and I appeared to keep pace with him all the way. He appeared to make it all seem so easy. I had to work a lot harder. Although that seemed unfair, that was just the nature of our own personalities and academic ability. There was an ongoing belief among many professors at the time, that purely written work was not an indication that you understood what you had studied. They insisted in most subjects that you present your work orally and were prepared to debate what your you had learnt. Many students struggled, but two of us stood out. Martin was often called upon to tear down what I presented and I, in turn, took delight in doing the same to him. He certainly knew that I existed after the first of these events because he came unstuck. Thinking he could handle anything, he was unprepared for someone who had the facts on hand that he should have had, who would rip apart his unsubstantiated generalisations. From that day it was game on and gradually a mutual respect was formed.

      He and I had also something else in common. We both didn't fit in. He was by far, too superior intellectually for those of his ilk and appeared to find them them to be pretentious twats. I was the odd one out, cadging cigarettes where I could and working in grocery shops to supplement my scholarship. My clothes, my Birmingham accent, my lack of money and my youth saw me on the outer. Two people at either end of the social scale both found no friends in those first two years.

      I never looked up Martin's entry in Debrett’s Peerage or in Who's Who. I am sure that his bloodlines are written down somewhere like they do for racehorses. He was just like me, I figured. He put his pants on the same way. They may have been made of high-quality material and professionally tailored, but he still dropped them like everyone else in the toilet cubicle. There is no ranking for excreta. Shit was shit as far as I was concerned. It didn't dawn on me at the time that a peerage may have been more of a burden than a blessing. Expectations would have been high for him. At least I was expected to fail. That drove me on, but as I got to know Martin, I learned that extra pressure on him to succeed was a hindrance. Perhaps that was why he rebelled and why he seemed to join the more leftist elements in university.

      From what I knew of the public school system, you were taught not just skills and knowledge, but also drilled in proper attitudes towards those of lesser social standing. You were spoon fed all the way through so that your O levels and A levels were of superior standard, but you were also indoctrinated in the class system that made you literally top of the classes. Once in university however, some of that support system was taken away. You had to think for yourself. You had to do the work yourself. Many public-school students were taken down a peg or two because they couldn't do either. However, many were rescued by academic staff who went out of their way to help. Families of these students were extremely grateful and bestowed gifts on the university and the professors. Money and social standing curried a lot of influence.

      Martin didn't need that support however and as I was to learn later, he would have thrown it back in the faces of those who offered it. That was later though. When I first met him, I thought he was just some smug supercilious smart-arse who enunciated words with too much pomp and ceremony. The chip I had on my shoulder certainly affected my ability to see most people for who they really were. I would have happily manned the barricades during the French Revolution, but not given a thought for those led off to the guillotine, never realising that they too were thinking and feeling human beings, trapped within their own class, just as much as I was trapped in mine.

      I don’t think anyone knew the real Martin King and today that probably still is true, and that includes himself. When you listen to him these days his upbringing was in juxtaposition with his views on how life should be led. The trappings of wealth, privilege and title were just that a trap and he seemed to be trying to release himself from those. Whether there were family and childhood reasons for that, he would never confide in anyone to the best of my knowledge. He encased his personal emotions in a hard outer shell and only allowed passion to break free on issues of great importance to him. This just added to the standoffishness that was evident in dealing with almost everyone. However, it created a great mystery and aura around him, perhaps because when those passions were released, his intelligence and rapier wit left others who would debate him, in his tracks.

      Personally, I found him a complete enigma. I had always been told by my parents that their gift to me was to support me through as much education as I could get. They saw that education was the key to getting out of the world that they had felt imprisoned in. It was as if I was to be doing what they wished they could have done. If I disappointed them in any way, there was a threat of physical punishment hanging in the air. To them, I was the one who was going to prove that upward mobility was possible. Martin, on the other hand, seemed intent on proving that downward mobility was possible and, in his case, infinitely desirable. How his parents felt about that was anyone’s guess. He never spoke of them and in all the time that we were there in Oxford, his father only visited once and that was to bestow something to the college. We were all supposed to grovel and bow and scrape at the feet of someone who was so benevolent. The masters and

      Enjoying the preview?
      Page 1 of 1