I Couldn’t Care Less
(from Graveyard Rendezvous 40)
Malcolm Palmer could not remember how long he had been in the condemned cell. Sometimes he thought it was only since yesterday, other times it seemed years. They had returned capital punishment to Britain, he didn’t know when and he wasn’t really interested. All he knew was that one of the mornings they would come for him, lead him down to the execution chamber and that would be that. Finis!
He had not appealed against his sentence. Or rather, if his lawyer had done so then he had not informed Malcolm. In fact, Malcolm did not mind dying at all because there was nothing left to live for now that Paula was gone. They had found him guilty of her murder and that hurt a lot. But, on reflection, he had had plenty of time to think about it, his wife would know that he had not killed
her. Soon they would be together. He couldn’t wait to join her; he just wished that he knew when it would be.
He went over it all again in his tortured mind, the shock and the tragedy, the grief that had blinded him to all else. He had been shaving in the bathroom that fateful morning when he had heard Paula going downstairs. If she had walked slowly, carefully, like he was always telling her to do, then she would still be alive today and he would not be cooped up in this pokey little cell waiting to die. But Paula was fifteen years younger than himself and she did everything at teenage speed.
Instead of holding on to the banister, she ran downstairs. Because the phone was ringing in the hall.
‘Let ‘em bloody well wait!’ he had shouted after her.
Too late! He heard her trip. She gave a kind of startled squeal and then he heard her going all the way down the steep flight. Bump-bump-bumpety-bump. Crash!
Oh, God! He almost yelled his anguish aloud just at the very memory. He had rushed out of the bathroom, stared in horror at the petite form lying at an unnatural angle on the hall floor, her head twisted to one side. Sitting in his cell now it all came back to him just as though it had happened this very minute. Again. He had rushed downstairs, his face still lathered in shaving foam, and tried to pick her up. Her head had lolled; she had stared up at him with sightless eyes.
No, you’re not dead, Paula. Please don’t die. Everything’s going to be fine.
He had carried her through to the settee in the lounge, laid her there and gone and made her a strong cup of tea with three sugars. ‘Drink your tea, Paula, you’ll feel better then. Then we’ll go downtown and I’ll buy you that dress you wanted.’
She didn’t drink her tea. She never moved again. He stayed and comforted her for three whole days; the police said it was a week because she had started to smell when they finally came for her.
Paula went to the mortuary and Malcolm was taken to the police station. They asked him question after question but he wasn’t able to tell them much because he couldn’t remember. ‘All right, I kept her for a week, then. I was hoping she’d get better.’
‘I’m afraid we’re going to have to charge you, Malcolm Palmer.’
Now Paula was dead, it didn’t matter. He gave up telling them that she’d fallen downstairs, they didn’t believe him anyway.
‘Just do what you want with me, I couldn’t care less…couldn’t care less…’
He remembered something his father told him, wagging a stern finger at him every time he said that when he was a small boy. ‘Don’t care was hanged.’ Even in boyhood Malcolm had queried that silly statement. They didn’t hang people for not caring.
Well, apparently they did.
Malcolm’s brain had switched off, nothing registered with him because it didn’t matter any longer. They were going to hang him, drop him down through the trap door and either his neck would be dislocated or else he would die from strangulation.
I couldn’t care less.
It was strange how morbid subjects like hanging fascinated small boys. When Malcolm was six his father had taken him to a church garden fete, one of the sideshows had been a miniature gallows. It cost a penny to go into the tent and when the tent was full the man tied the flap. The show lasted about two seconds, the tiny figure, a black hood over its head, dropped down though the trap door and you could just see its feet swinging, twisting one way then the other.
Everybody out. Next please! Malcolm had not got any further than that tent; he’d spent the whole shilling which his father had given him in there. Twelve hangings. Well thirteen, actually because the man let him watch one free as he was a regular customer!
A few years later he had read an article in the newspaper about hanging – “What
Really Happens.” Sometimes, when the hangman miscalculated his weights and measures, the victim’s head came off. On one occasion they had had to pull the guy back up and hang him again because they’d made a cock-up. Malcolm wondered if it was any different these days. He couldn’t care less.
***
They had drugged him, he guessed that much. Slipped something in his tea, doubtless. His vision was distorted as he stumbled out of the cell and along the corridor. He knew what they were doing, all right. The rope was rough
