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THE MAN WHO HAD FIVE LIVES

      Published by Raymond Scott

      First published as The Man Who Had 5 Lives - 2012

      Republished as The Fifth Identity - 2015

      © 2011, 2015 Raymond Scott

      The moral right of the author has been asserted.

      All rights reserved. Without limiting the rights under copyright restricted above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise), without the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book.

      Cover design by WorkingType

      ISBN: 9781925281514 (ebk)

      Chapter 1

      John Accrington entered the hotel room and dropped his brief case on the bed. He walked to the window, looked out and then he checked his watch. It had been arranged that the man, known to Accrington as Simon, would be calling upon Accrington at his hotel room. But there was one action that Accrington was determined to do first, he certainly wasn’t going to take anyone on trust and meekly surrender all his cards at one go. He had determined to work on the basis of starting with a very low figure and seeing how things went, he was prepared to negotiate. He had another look at his watch; he had about twenty minutes before the other was due to make contact. He wondered how much Simon knew about him, he had threatened to expose him but how much did he know?

      Accrington turned away from the window, picked up his brief case from the bed and made his way to the door. He left his room and walked towards the lift, as he did so he realised that he was really feeling his age as the years caught up with him. His one hip persisted in giving discomfort, this had developed over the last few months or so, maybe he needed a hip replacement. He was also aware that his heart was giving him problems now. Perhaps the incessant fear of discovery over the last fifty years had finally caught up with him, the worry of whether he was being followed, or of being summarily apprehended. These fears had slowly receded with the passing of time, but nevertheless they were always there, and they always would be.

      This man Simon undoubtedly had knowledge of Accrington’s history, though whether it was all or part Accrington had no way of knowing, not yet. With Accrington’s past life, danger could approach from two separate and totally unconnected directions; he didn’t know whether Simon was aware of both. That would probably be cleared up when they met. He only had one connection with his past lives and that was the tenuous one he had had with Helen. But Helen would never have betrayed him, he was sure her feelings for him had been too strong; in any case, she’d hardly have bitten the hand that fed her. Helen was now dead, could she have left anything in her papers that someone had retrieved?

      Accrington emerged from the lift, walked up to reception and asked the young man behind the counter if he could see the manager. There was a slight delay before the day manager appeared. Accrington explained what he required; the manager accepted his brief case and issued a receipt.

      “This will go into our safe, Mr Accrington,” he said. “Only I and my night colleague, Mr Latham, have access to the combination. When will you require it?”

      “I can’t say for sure, probably sometime over the weekend, thank you.”

      Accrington turned away from the counter, wincing as his hip gave him another jab.

      “Must get this bloody hip fixed,” he murmured to himself. He looked at the receipt in his hand. “Well at least the money’s out of the way, best that friend Simon, whoever he is, doesn’t know where it is nor how much! Now we’ll see what transpires.”

      ****

      “What exactly did they hear?”

      The night manager, Peter Latham, bit his lip as the police sergeant asked the question. They were on the sixth floor of the hotel, before the open door of room 624, and were aware that heads were peering inquisitively out of various doors further along the corridor.

      “The guests in 622 said that they heard raised voices coming from this room, and a sound as if someone or something had hit the party wall. They heard the door of 624 slam shut so they went to their door and looked down the corridor. They saw a man running away from them towards the stairwell.”

      “What happened next?”

      “They discussed what to do, and then rang Security.”

      “What then?”

      “Security came up and knocked at the door, announced who they were and called out to anyone inside to open the door,” Latham replied. “Finally, after consulting with me, they unlocked the door, and found the man inside lying on the floor.”

      “Did they go in?”

      “Yes, Mervyn Preece went in to see if he could render assistance,” said Latham. “But the man was dead, as soon as he realised it Mervyn got out and we called the police.”

      “Nobody has been in the room since?”

      “No, we waited for you to arrive. We’ve been outside the room since then and allowed nobody to go in.”

      Sergeant Allison compressed his lips and then nodded.

      “You’ve done well,” he said. “Which of you is Mervyn Preece?”

      “I am,” said a dark haired man of swarthy complexion who was wearing a dark jacket with “Security” across the left breast pocket.

      “What did you touch?”

      “Just his neck, he didn’t seem to be breathing so I was checking for a pulse. He’d gone. He’d bled from a wound at the back of his head. Looked to me as if he’d hit his head against the sharp corner of the cabinet.”

      “Yes, I agree, it certainly looks that way,” commented Allison, and reached for his radio, at the same time turning to the uniformed constable by his side. “Close the door, Alec, I’ll call it in.”

      The case was allocated for investigation by Detective Inspector Barry Freedman and Detective Sergeant Harrison. They had recently been teamed up, Freedman being transferred from the Fraud Squad and Harrison had recently been transferred from one of the county police forces. They were still feeling their way with each other, Freedman had initially been somewhat put out because he had assumed he was being saddled with a country bumpkin.

      After consultations with the forensics department, they learned that John Accrington had apparently fallen backwards and hit his head on the sharp corner of the bench on which the television set stood. He had been killed instantly by the impact. The conclusion reached was that though it was possible, it seemed highly unlikely that he had fallen accidentally; it appeared more likely that he had been pushed. It was open to question whether the person who pushed him had any murderous intent or was just pushing him away. There were apparently no other marks on the body to indicate violence.

      A man had been observed entering a lift in the foyer about twenty minutes before the argument had been heard emanating from Accrington’s room; he had not been observed leaving the lift afterwards on the ground floor. He was described as about 5′10″ in height, dark hair, aged about 40, of European extraction (IC 1) and dressed in a dark blazer and light coloured trousers. He had been picked up on CCTV by three cameras, from a cursory look they had some idea of what he looked like, but his picture didn’t seem to fit any known villains.

      Freedman and Harrison had surmised that he must have left via the stair well, and somehow found his way out of the building without being observed, he had been picked up by a surveillance camera outside as he emerged from a passageway by the side of the building. It was not known whether he had a vehicle, but there was a Tube Station, Earls Court, in the direction where he had been heading so Freedman had put in a request to the London Underground for a view of the station tapes. There was a possibility that the man had entered the Underground station but there the trail had fizzled out.

      It had been discovered that John Accrington

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