William Carlton was a wealthy man who always got what he
wanted – or nearly always. Things went horribly wrong, though, on the day that
his beautiful young wife was kidnapped and held for ransom.
She had been what is generally known as a “trophy wife” – regarded
as yet another piece of property that was part of his rich man’s image. Her
role had been to wear expensive clothes and drip with jewelry as she accompanied
him to events and receptions with the sole purpose of enhancing his reputation as
a man to do business with.
William faced a dilemma when the ransom demands kept coming.
No – the dilemma was not whether or not to pay the ransom, which never entered
his mind for a second. His problem was what to do with all those clothes and jewels
after she had been murdered, which was clearly what was going to happen - and
did.
She had to be replaced as soon as possible, but the ideal
candidate was not easy to find. Eventually he struck lucky, and Eva became trophy
wife number two. William had grown rich for various reasons, one of which was his
refusal to spend money when there was no need to do so. He had already invested
many thousands of pounds on all those designer dresses and he had no intention of
letting that outlay go to waste. His new wife therefore had to be exactly the
same size as his unfortunate first one, and Eva’s dimensions were perfect. She
fitted the bill because she fitted the dresses.
Eva was Slovenian. Many of her forebears had been Holocaust
victims, and her own parents had died in a ferry-boat disaster some years
before. She had been an only child. She therefore came with no baggage
metaphorically and very little physically. She was bound to leap at the chance
to live in a big house surrounded by every luxury that her new husband considered
suitable for enhancing his status. A marriage was duly arranged and Eva moved
in.
William knew that one extra expense he would have to undertake
would be to improve the security of the house when Eva was alone. A second
kidnap would be an inconvenience that he was not willing to undergo, so the
place soon bristled with CCTV, searchlights, and everything necessary to turn
the place into somewhere that no potential kidnapper would dream of invading.
William did not go as far as hiring security guards – having
other men on the premises struck him as an unsafe move. Eva was a very beautiful
woman and surely a temptation to any red-blooded male. Apart from that, there
was also the risk that a security guy might turn into a kidnapper.
Of course, there was one thing that never entered William’s
head, and that was what Eva might have wanted. Not only did all that security
make her a virtual prisoner, but she soon came to realise that this marriage
was completely one-way. There was one thing that she really desired, and that
was a child of her own so that she could have what she had never had in her past
– a proper family life.
But that did not suit William.
“You think I want you pregnant”? he said, when she broached
the subject. “You wouldn’t fit into the dresses if you were pregnant. No way
are you going to get pregnant.”
After many months getting nowhere with this request, Eva
came to the conclusion that her only way of self-fulfillment was to get out of
the marriage and find a man who would treat her as a real wife and not a trophy
one.
“I want a divorce”, she said. “I want you to let me go.”
William laughed. “A divorce?” he said. “Don’t be stupid. How
would you live without me? You’ve got no money, no way of supporting yourself, you’d
starve in the street.”
And Eva believed this to be true. She was utterly dependent
on William, who never stopped reminding her of that fact.
However, William’s real concern was that any divorce
settlement would lead to him having to settle a large part of his personal
fortune on his wife, and that was something that he could not possibly countenance.
Every request for a divorce from Eva could always be rebuffed.
She had no access to a divorce lawyer – William made absolutely sure of that –
and so the only way the marriage could end would be if he divorced her.
“Tell you what”, he said to her one day. “I will divorce you.”
Eva was suddenly very interested. “You will?” she said.
“Sure. When you are no longer beautiful, or the dresses are
so far out of fashion that I’ll need to buy new ones. But that won’t be any
time soon.”
“Please let me go”, she said, “Please.”
And then one day a letter arrived that changed everything. It
was addressed to Eva and it told her that a great-uncle in Slovenia had died
and that she had been tracked down as the only living relative and therefore
the beneficiary of his entire fortune, which amounted to something like £25
million.
To say that this was a big surprise was an understatement.
Eva had had no idea that this great-uncle existed, let alone that she was in
line to become extremely rich when he died.
That morning they drove into town in William’s Lamborghini to
visit the bank and discuss what should be done next. An account was opened in
Eva’s name and she stared at the computer screen as the money was transferred into
it. She was suddenly a very rich woman.
On the way home, William was deep in thought about his next
move, and was not really concentrating behind the wheel, when a large lorry
emerged from the entrance to the local quarry. He slammed on the brakes and the
car slewed sideways across the road, crashed through a wooden fence, and just
stopped short of plunging down into the very deep quarry. The Lamborghini was precariously
balanced right on the edge. Eva had not shut the car door properly on leaving
town and it now swung open. She was flung out and was only prevented from
falling to certain death by her seatbelt.
Her screams could be heard all across the quarry as she
begged William to pull her back. However, William was aware that any move on
his part to drag Eva back might be enough to send the car over the edge,
killing both of them.
He was also aware that if Eva died, having not made a will,
then he would be her sole beneficiary. That was not a panicking young woman
hanging over the edge of a quarry but £25 million, less tax.
There was one thing that William could reach without any
danger of unbalancing the car, and that was the release button on Eva’s
seatbelt. This had to be the perfect solution – self-preservation and a nice
wodge of extra cash. Thus the last words that Eva was ever to hear were those
of her husband:
“What was that you keep saying you want me to do? Let you
go? For once in your soon-to-be-truncated life, your wish is my command.”
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