Killing For Company

by Brian Masters

  None of Nilsen’s colleagues visited the attic flat in Cranley Gardens which he shared with his dog. They were not invited, and they did not feel inclined to suggest dropping in. Des was amusing and bright, but not cosy; he was not the sort to attract a confidence. Besides, he tended to talk so much, about matters of political or union interest, that there would be little promise of an intimate chat. So he was left to go home alone, passing the strangers on the ground floor as he climbed three flights of stairs to his own front door. The scene beyond the door was frankly squalid. A tiny hall, immediately before you as you opened the door, served as a kitchen, with a gas stove on the left against the wall, and next to it a sink. The stove was thick with grease and fat left by a succession of previous tenants, which Nilsen had not bothered to clean. He never used the grimy oven, but confined his cooking to the rings on the top. Immediately opposite was the door to his bathroom, the bathtub on the right beneath a sloping ceiling in which was a large, square roof window, kept wide open. The two doors on the right of the hall/ kitchen led to a front room and a bedroom at the back, both with sloping attic ceilings. Nilsen lived in the bedroom, which contained a double bed, a large television set, stereo equipment, some posters on the wall, pot plants, and a thick, tall candle with months of molten wax cascading down the sides. The room at the front had two plain wardrobes, a tea-chest in the corner, and two armchairs either side of the window. Little else. The carpets were not fitted, but lay squarely on the floor, dull, brown, patterned, not alluring. This room appeared never to be used, but was distinguished by one feature, clearly visible from the street and often commented upon; the front windows were always flung wide open. What you could not see from the street were the occasional joss-sticks in the room which struggled to disperse an indeterminate, unpleasant smell.

  During the first week of February 1983, a problem arose at the house which was initially to affect all the tenants and eventually to have repercussions which would be felt far beyond the confines of Cranley Gardens. It was Jim Allcock who first noticed that the toilet, which he shared with Fiona and the two other girls on the ground floor, would not flush. This was on Thursday, 3 February. Twice he tried to clear the blockage, using an acid preparation which he bought from the ironmongers, but whatever was causing the obstruction resisted the acid poured down the lavatory pan and could not be made to budge by any amount of prodding with sticks. The water would rise in the pan but would not fall again. There was a danger of overflowing, a danger to health. Jim decided he would call Ellis & Co. the following day.

  On Friday, 4 February, Fiona Bridges left a note in the lavatory to warn Vivienne and Monique not to use it in case there was a risk from the acid. She then tried to use another lavatory next to her usual one, and noticed that when this was flushed it made the water rise in the other one. It was especially inconvenient as her parents were coming to stay for the weekend (and Jim would have to move out). There seemed to be no lavatory in the house which was working properly. Jim called Ellis & Co., who gave him the number of a plumber, Mike Welch, who could see to the job quickly; he had been to the house before. At 4.15 p.m. Fiona called him and left a message with his wife. A couple of hours later, she bumped into Des Nilsen in the hall and asked him if he was having any trouble with his toilet, as hers was blocked. He said no, he had no trouble, and went upstairs to his flat. Mike Welch was home by 8.30 that evening, received the message about 23 Cranley Gardens, and determined to investigate the matter first thing on Saturday morning. Miss Bridges had been told not to expect him until then anyway. On Friday night they would just have to make do.

  That same Friday night upstairs in the attic, Dennis Nilsen had other problems to cope with. In one of his wardrobes in the front room was the dead body of a young man he had met eight days before. Nilsen took a black plastic disposal bag, slit it up the side to make a sheet of it, and laid it on the floor of the front room, right in the middle. From the wardrobe he hauled the body and laid it face upwards on the plastic sheet. He went to the kitchen and selected a long kitchen knife with a brown handle, which he sharpened briefly, then took it with him into the front room. Kneeling on the floor, he carefully cut off the young man’s head. There was rather more blood than he anticipated, some of it flowing off the sheet on to the carpet, so he had to prepare another plastic sheet. From the bathroom he brought in a large cooking pot, placed the young man’s head in it, filled it with water, and took it to the kitchen stove. He lit two burners so that the pot would boil more quickly, from the sides as well as from underneath. Back in the front room, he moved the headless body from one sheet on to the other, and took up the first. Some of the blood spilled off on to the white bathroom carpet as he was carrying it through. He tried to mop this up with paper towels, unsuccessfully, then covered the stain with a spare bit of brown carpet. By now he was getting fed up with his chore. He felt he needed a drink, and as he had the whole weekend in front of him to complete the job, why hurry? In the kitchen, the head was beginning to boil furiously, so he turned it down to simmer, called Bleep, and showed her the lead. She was naturally excited at the prospect of a walk. He did not pass any of the people downstairs on his way out.

  Dennis Nilsen and his dog walked down to Muswell Hill Broadway and went to Shepherd’s supermarket. While Bleep stayed tied up outside, Nilsen bought some cigarettes, a bottle of Bacardi rum and some Coca-Cola. They walked back to Cranley Gardens at a leisurely pace. They saw no one on the way upstairs, and the young man’s head was still simmering gently. Nilsen listened to some music through his headphones (classical orchestral music had appeal at times like this, being soothing and peaceful; his favourite pop music, particularly Laurie Anderson’s ‘Oh Superman’, was too suggestive of recent memories). He also watched some television, and managed to polish off three-quarters of his new bottle of rum. At the end of a long evening he switched the gas off under the simmering pot, and left the head there overnight. The rest of the body still lay in the front room. Dennis Nilsen went to bed, tired and slightly drunk.

  He did not wake up until 11 a.m. the next morning, Saturday, 5 February, by which time the plumber Mike Welch was already investigating the blockage downstairs. He had arrived at 10.30 a.m. and having tried to clear the lavatory pan with his usual tools, which did not work, he went home to get a ladder so that he could have a look under the inspection cover on the wall outside where the pipes from all lavatories in the house converged. He cleared the junction of accumulated excrement and tried to reach down further into the vertical pipe but failed. At that point Mike Welch decided that this would have to be a job for specialists with sophisticated equipment; ordinary plumbers’ tools were clearly unequal to the task. He told Miss Bridges and Mr Allcock that they should call Dyno-rod.

  Jim Allcock called Dyno-rod at 12.40 p.m. on Saturday afternoon, while Fiona Bridges contacted Ellis & Co. Although Ellis & Co. agreed to pay the bill, they could not give authority for any work to be carried out until the following Monday. In view of the fact that they would all be stuck with a blocked drain for the rest of the weekend, Jim left a note on Des Nilsen’s door asking him not to use his toilet lest it cause overflowing in the others. ‘Plumber has been don’t flush the loo,’ it said. Later on Saturday Fiona saw Nilsen on his way out and explained the meaning of the note; she said she would let him know on Monday when it was all right to resume use of the toilet. Nilsen acknowledged and walked off, pensive. ‘I began to realise that it could be something to do with my activities,’ he later admitted.1

  Those ‘activities’ had already caused Nilsen some embarrassment that afternoon. His doorbell had rung unexpectedly. He couldn’t possibly let anyone in with a decapitated body on the floor. He turned the television down and held Bleep to keep her quiet. A little later there were knocks at his door. He waited until he heard footsteps down the stairs. ‘I thought it could be someone I knew. It would have been silly of me to say “You can’t come in,” so I stayed quiet.’2 The visitor was an old friend whom he had not seen i
n months, Martin Hunter-Craig. Hunter-Craig was one of the few people who had demonstrated to Nilsen that he enjoyed his company, and he would normally have been a very welcome guest. He was passing through (he lived in Devon) and decided to surprise Des. According to his recollections, Des did answer the door without opening it. ‘Don’t come in, I’m tied up with someone here,’ he said.3

  Nilsen spent the entire evening on Saturday watching the television. On Sunday afternoon, 6 February, he braced himself to finish off the job of dismemberment. By this time he knew that on Monday some awkward questions might be asked. The least he could do was hide things away in the wardrobe. He took the knife again, sharpened it, and cut the body into four pieces: two sections of arm and shoulder, the rib cage, and the lower half of the torso up to the waist and including the legs. The first three sections he placed in plastic bags and put them in the cupboard. The legs were put in another bag and stuffed under an upturned drawer in the bathroom. He removed the partially boiled head from the pot, and put this into a plastic carrier bag and then into one of the black plastic bags which contained the other remains. On top of everything he placed a deodorant stick and locked both doors to the wardrobe. For the moment the problem was locked away and could be forgotten. But time was running out; Nilsen’s mind would not be allowed to rest for many more hours. A few hours would make little difference to a mind which had been in sporadic and secret turmoil for over four years. The moment was approaching for taking stock and reaching decisions.

  Monday, 7 February, did not bring the promised resolution of the drainage problem. Fiona Bridges called the agents again and was told the matter was in hand. Yet it was not until Tuesday afternoon at 4.15 p.m. that Ellis & Co. instructed Dyno-rod to conduct a thorough investigation of the premises. Meanwhile Nilsen went to work as usual at the Jobcentre in Kentish Town, where he was observed to dispatch his desk-load with his customary assiduity and energy. He was however a trifle short with colleagues, rather more impatient than usual. To one he apologised, remarking that he was under great pressure at the moment.

  The Dyno-rod engineer eventually appeared at 23 Cranley Gardens at 6.15 p.m. on Tuesday, 8 February. He was Michael Cattran, thirty years old and relatively new to the staff. After a cursory examination of the pipes he decided that the problem was most likely below ground level and would have to be properly investigated in daylight. It was already dark, but with the help of Jim Allcock, who held a torch, Cattran went to the side of the house, where there was a manhole cover, cracked across the top, leading directly down to the sewers. The drop inside was about twelve feet, and access was made possible by iron rungs in the wall of the manhole. Cattran went down the steps while Allcock held the torch. They both noticed a peculiarly revolting smell, which Cattran knew not to be the usual smell from excrement. To Allcock he said, ‘I may not have been in the game for long, but I know that isn’t shit.’ In fact, he was convinced it was the smell of rotting flesh. There was a porridge on the floor of the sewer, eight inches thick, composed of about thirty or forty pieces of flesh, greyish-white in colour and of various sizes. As Cattran moved, more of the thick white substance fell out of the pipe leading from the house. He was deeply worried and knew straight away that he would have to report the matter to his superiors. Back in the house at 7 p.m. he telephoned his manager, Gary Wheeler, and told him his suspicions. By this time all the tenants were surrounding Michael Cattran and heard the conversation. Monique and Vivienne came out of their room, Des Nilsen came downstairs. Wheeler said they would have to take a closer look together in the morning, if the tenants did not mind waiting, but there was no need yet to call the police, in case they were making a fuss about nothing and the blockage could be satisfactorily explained. Cattran put down the telephone and said to Nilsen, ‘You’ve got a dog, haven’t you? Do you put dog meat down the toilet?’ Nilsen replied that he did not, but the remark suggested to him a possible course of action.

  Nilsen had already written and posted a letter to Mr Roberts of Ellis & Co., dated 8 February, asking that ‘routine upkeep and maintenance’ of the house be attended to in order to keep ‘living standards at a tolerable level’. He specifically complained about lack of lighting in the common areas, and further, ‘When I flush my toilet the lavatory pans in the lower flats overflow (since Friday 4 February). Obviously the drains are blocked and unpleasant odours permeate the building.’4 Did he write this as a demonstration that he was as bewildered as everybody else in the house, to deflect the finger of suspicion? Or did he wish to bring matters to a speedy conclusion? His motives were undeniably mixed and confused. The desire to survive was almost irresistible, yet stronger still, perhaps, was the need to seek release from an intolerable nightmare. The struggle of opposing forces continued within him until about midnight, by which time he had made up his mind.

  Before he left, Cattran took both Allcock and Nilsen to look once more at the blockage down the manhole, shining his torch and commenting that it looked like flesh. Nilsen went upstairs to his flat and pondered. At midnight he came down again, removed the manhole cover and climbed down to the debris, carrying a torch and carrier bag. ‘I cleared the particles of white flesh and dumped them over the back garden hedge,’ he later wrote.

  I had planned to go to the supermarket or Kentucky Fried Chicken and purchase a few pounds’ weight of chicken pieces. These I would soak, cut up into similar chunks as that removed (being careful to leave easily identifiable wing-tips and drum-sticks). Any close examination in the morning would reveal in the open stretch of pipe an ordinary shattering of the imagination. The police and Dyno-rod would lose interest. The Dyno-rod man would not wish to appear foolish when the police were called again. I could see this plan easily succeeding. I could also see before me a situation where I could not guarantee that another death would not occur at some future time. I was sickened by the past, the present, and a doubtful future. I had found the whole mad burden of guilt intolerable.5

  Nilsen drank lots of Bacardi that night. He thought of suicide, but rejected the idea because nobody would believe what he had to say in any note he might leave, so incredible would it seem, and besides he owed it to ‘all the others’ to let their fate be known; that fate would never be revealed if he were dead. ‘Someone’s got to know the truth about what happened to them,’ he thought. He would also have had to kill Bleep, if he killed himself, and he knew he would never be able to do that. He could run away, disappear, but he could not escape from himself; he could not live with the notion that he was a coward, nor could he feel content that his deeds should forever remain undetected. A peculiar and paradoxical desire that he should not ‘get away with it’ compounded the torment of his mind as the hours dragged on. But at last he knew what he would do. He finished the rum, ‘listened to some music and kept Bleep close to me (the last warm and lovely influence left in my life)’.6 Finally, he slept.

  Fiona Bridges and Jim Allcock were by now more than apprehensive; they were seriously alarmed. They had heard the footsteps on the stairs, the front door opening, the manhole being removed, more clanking and scraping, the sound of someone walking down the side of the house towards the garden. Fiona had said to Jim, ‘There’s somebody having a go at the manhole. I bet it’s him upstairs.’7 Jim took a pole and went to investigate, catching Nilsen as he came back in, his shirt sleeves rolled up above the elbow, a torch in his hand. ‘Just went out to have a pee,’ he said, but Jim had not believed him. Neither he nor Fiona slept well.

  At 8.30 the next morning, 9 February, they heard Nilsen walk down the stairs. Jim looked out of the window and watched him disappear down the street. At 9.15 a.m. Michael Cattran arrived with his manager Gary Wheeler and went straight to the manhole. Cattran lifted the cover, shone his torch down, and to his utter consternation saw that the drain was clear. ‘It’s all gone,’ he exclaimed. It didn’t make sense; no amount of rainfall could have dislodged such a large amount, and he already knew the lavatories were not functioning well enough to have any effect. C
attran rang the front door bell; Jim Allcock had seen all the stuff last night, he could confirm it. In fact, Jim had gone to work, but he had seen all the confirmation he needed before he left. At the side of the house, he noticed that the crack in the manhole cover was now in a different position.

  Cattran went down the manhole to have a closer look. He put his hand in one of the drains which led into the sewer and pulled out a piece of meat from the back of the interceptor. ‘I’ve got something,’ he said. Wheeler told him to bring it up. They put it on the ground and thought for a moment; it smelt like something from a slaughter-house, was greyish yellow, wrinkled, about six inches long, like a piece of chicken. There were also four pieces of bone which Cattran retrieved from the same source. Fiona Bridges came out and told the men about the noises she had heard coming from the manhole during the night. She admitted she was scared. At that point it was decided to call the police.

  Dennis Nilsen turned in at the office as usual and tried to behave normally. But he knew he would never be back there. He tidied his desk and left a note in a plain brown envelope tucked at the back of the drawer, on which he wrote that should he be arrested, there would be no truth in any announcement saying that he committed suicide in his cell. This was all he left. He seemed cheerful enough, and was even wearing a blue and white football scarf, a quite uncharacteristic dazzle of colour. No one knew he possessed such a scarf. Later, he wrote about his thoughts on that day.

  I was sure that I would probably be arrested when I came home or some time that evening. I was through running. I was totally resigned to this inevitability. I was worried about what was going to happen to Bleep. I was also worried about the shock my revelations would bring to the next of kin of those who had died. The night before I had thought of dumping the remains left in my flat but decided to leave everything exactly where it was. I even thought an arrest might not come until the next morning (10/2/83). By the time I arrived home on the evening of 9 February I was tired and prepared for what lay ahead. I thought that the police would either be outside waiting in a car, in another flat, or actually outside my flat.8