Dennis Nilsen - Conversations with Britain's Most Evil Serial Killer by Russ Coffey Page A

given the introduction his best shot, the author was only half expecting a reply. What he received on 30 March was truly chilling. The first line read, ‘Dear Mr Masters, I pass the burden of my past actions on to your shoulders.’
    Authors in England are not, in fact, allowed to contact prisoners on remand unless express permission is given. Masters’ initial letter had slipped past the prison censor. When the correct procedure had been explained, Masters then contacted Nilsen’s solicitor at the time, Ronnie Moss, a cheerful man whom he describes as looking more like a publican than a solicitor. Moss helped him make the correct application to the authorities concerning the writing project.
    Meanwhile, he was given a one-off visiting order to meet Nilsen as a friend. On 20 April, they met in Brixton’s noisy visitors’ room. From what he had read, Masters was expecting a nervy, introspective man only comfortable expressing himself on paper. He was surprised to find in Dennis Nilsen a tall, imposing figure, ‘bristling with confidence’.
    Shortly after the meeting, the Home Office gave Masters the green light to carry on with his visits. This worried DCI Jay and DCS Chambers. Their investigation was still ongoing and they were concerned Masters’ influence might affect Nilsen’s attitude and co-operation. They also doubted Masters had the stomach for what he was about to undertake.
    He was therefore summoned to the station where they showed photographs of what they had found in the flat. The portfolio included gruesome pictures of Sinclair. In his own memoirs, Masters describes ‘the lips boiled away, the eyes soft and gluey, and the hair drifting to one side’, as examples of thesort of images he would never be able to forget. But these pictures also confirmed to him that here was a unique opportunity to explore the reality of evil.
    Masters was not used to handling criminals. His recent subjects had been members of the aristocracy. But, whether by design or default, his approach turned out to be the key to open Nilsen. Masters just went ahead as normal and the prisoner responded with lengthy answers.
    Nilsen would later tell me that the reason he had been so candid was because Masters was ‘all there was’, implying that if he had had any alternative outlet, he might have taken it instead. In truth, Masters was both a skilful interviewer and a sincere man. Nilsen also appears to have hoped that his sensitivity would also enable him to understand one crucial aspect to his character: his sexuality.
    Increasingly, Nilsen let his guard down. It wasn’t just the crimes he spoke about. He issued a stream of thoughts on his entire existence. One letter to Masters listed all the roles he had played in his life: schoolboy, soldier, chef, projectionist, policeman, clerical officer, executive officer, drunk, sexualist (male and female), murderer, animal lover, independent trades union officer, debater, champion of social causes, do-gooder, dissector of murder victims, grand vizier, and probably ‘lifer’. He went on to speculate that if there were a God, what a strange set of ‘priorities’ he must have had for him.
    The more Nilsen opened up, the more friends and even the Crown’s trial psychiatrist, Paul Bowden, warned Masters that Nilsen might be manipulating him. Bookish and dapper, Brian Masters didn’t look much like a match for someone likeDennis Nilsen. Masters, however, felt equal to all of Nilsen’s games. He was, though, very aware he would need to play detective to find out the truth.
    It wasn’t just a case of judging what to believe but also finding the words to describe the drama of a man struggling to process a spree of 15 murders. His thoughts are given in a chapter called ‘Remand’. Here, Nilsen’s moods are described as a ‘kaleidoscope … shifting from elation to gloom, from resignation to despair, from regret about the past to hope for the future’.
    During the remaining months before