- Dr. Max DeBryn: Gentlemen. I'll start with George if I may. We don't want him lying in such company a moment longer than he has to.
- Alun Bodnar: A policeman? Well, Blackwell was right, then. You were never a teacher. I should have known.
- DS Endeavour Morse: How's that?
- Alun Bodnar: You didn't look beaten enough.
- DS Endeavour Morse: We should be getting back.
- DCI Fred Thursday: No. Another five minutes will be all right. God, I love this place. You should've seen their faces - Win and the kids - when I brought 'em here for the first time. We'd been two-up, back-to-back in the Smoke. Couldn't believe somewhere like this existed. Not after bomb sites and soot. It was like stepping out of black and white and into colour.
- Dr. Max DeBryn: [making a preliminary examination of Rowntree's corpse] No obvious evidence of foul play, but I think we can assume he didn't put himself in the coffin.
- DCI Fred Thursday: [after Nero has survived an attempt on his life] Sounds like you had a close shave.
- Eddie Nero: I've had closer.
- DCI Fred Thursday: Cromwell Ames - can't have you pair shooting up the town like it was the Wild West. Someone's going to get hurt.
- Eddie Nero: I nearly got hurt.
- DS Jim Strange: Someone who matters.
- DCI Fred Thursday: [talking about impending retirement] I'd hoped for one last decent collar together. This Cromwell Ames - Eddie Nero - both, if we're lucky.
- DS Endeavour Morse: Maybe they'll cancel each other out.
- DCI Fred Thursday: It's who else they cancel out in the meantime, that's what bothers me.
- DCI Fred Thursday: [discovering his brother has lost all the money he lent him in shady activities] You've done me, Charlie! My whole life, everything I've worked for - dragged into the sewer!
- Charlie Thursday: I didn't know...
- DCI Fred Thursday: Don't lie to me!
- Charlie Thursday: I had to do what I did, for Paulette, for Carol...
- DCI Fred Thursday: What about me and Win? It was our retirement, our life savings. Now I've got to spend whatever I've got left looking over my shoulder, waiting for the knock!
- Dr. Max DeBryn: [when the hiding-place of a corpse is discovered] Septic tank. What a treat. Better go through the motions.
- Alun Bodnar: Well, the parting of the ways. Here, you better take this.
- DS Endeavour Morse: Don't you need it?
- Alun Bodnar: No. I'd find my way back blindfolded after all this time. Go straight through the woods. Follow the path through a kissing gate, to the cottage. Safe home.
- DS Endeavour Morse: Thanks. You too.
- Alun Bodnar: He got in their heads... Morse. Ivory. You see, cruelty's like cancer. Starts with one cell. And if it's left untreated... it spreads... till the whole body's riddled with it. You've got to cut it out. You've got to... burn it out. Kill it at the source.
- Mr. Blackwell: [believing that Trewlove is Morse's wife] Give my regards to your wife. Good-looking girl. How'd you ever manage to snare a piece like that?
- DS Endeavour Morse: [coldly] Charm.
- Alun Bodnar: [greeting Morse for the first time] Welcome to St. Bastard's. Ye who enter here, all hope abandon.
- Chief Superintendent Reginald Bright: Well... When I arrived here three years ago, I had such high hopes. What an ignominious end I have led you all to. I shall resign, of course.
- DCI Fred Thursday: Sir...
- Chief Superintendent Reginald Bright: No, I failed him. I failed my men. The station gone. My brightest and best cast to the four winds and all is...
- [sighs]
- Chief Superintendent Reginald Bright: ... brought to ruin.
- DS Jim Strange: [after Fancy's death] We might be down, but we're not out. I'll be damned if this is how it ends. We'll have justice for him, sir. Find who shot that bullet, whatever it takes.
- DCI Fred Thursday: Jim's right, sir. They can call us Thames Valley till the cows come home, but wherever we wash up, we're City men, each one of us. To our boots. To the last.
- Chief Superintendent Reginald Bright: So few.
- DS Endeavour Morse: Enough to give him justice!
- DCI Fred Thursday: We'll find the bastard, sir.
- Chief Superintendent Reginald Bright: Your word on it?
- DCI Fred Thursday: My oath!
- DS Jim Strange: And mine.
- DS Endeavour Morse: For George.
- WPC Shirley Trewlove: [on her burgeoning relationship with George Fancy] We're young. We have to put career first. Haven't we?
- DS Endeavour Morse: Career won't hold you at three o'clock in the morning, when the wolves come circling.
- WPC Shirley Trewlove: Do they come circling, Morse?
- DS Endeavour Morse: [confronting Rackway] If you were involved in Ivory's murder, that's life. You won't go to prison at first, you're too young. But borstal? Believe me, it's nothing like Coldwater. No matron. No privs. Just bigger boys who don't play nice. Who'll be the squit then?
- WPC Shirley Trewlove: [refusing to attend George Fancy's funeral] The boy I liked is dead. I'm not going to sit and look at a box. Life is for the living, Morse. Don't waste time. It's all we've got.
- DCI Fred Thursday: [on Morse and Trewlove working undercover] Don't seem like proper coppering to me. Tomorrow's world. Pity.
- DCI Fred Thursday: [confronting the dying Eddie Nero in a room full of corpses] Drop the gun, Eddie.
- Eddie Nero: [pulling the trigger; it clicks empty] It's empty anyway.
- DCI Fred Thursday: Easy, Eddie. Don't talk.
- Eddie Nero: [making a great effort with his last breath] It... wasn't... me!
- [He dies, indicating, as he does, the hitherto-unseen dead body of George Fancy]
- DS Endeavour Morse: [discussing the question of "marriage versus career" with Trewlove] If I had found someone, then all this wouldn't matter at all.
- Alun Bodnar: Sorry I'm a bit early.
- DS Endeavour Morse: Hello.
- Alun Bodnar: Hello. Hello, Kate. How are you?
- Kate Ivory: Morse and Shirley have been spoiling me.
- [Chuckles]
- Alun Bodnar: Quite right too.
- WPC Shirley Trewlove: Early for what?
- Alun Bodnar: I'm here to lead your husband astray. A pint or two at the local.
- WPC Shirley Trewlove: Well, don't let us stop you.
- DS Endeavour Morse: It was lovely to have met you. Hopefully we'll see you again.
- DCI Fred Thursday: There's a reckoning to be made, but it's ours to make.
- Eddie Nero: Better get your skates on, then.
- DS Endeavour Morse: [asking Bodnar about Ivory] You said you didn't click. How come?
- Alun Bodnar: He spoke to the boys' baser instincts. Their lesser angels.
- DS Endeavour Morse: Oh...
- Alun Bodnar: And he was a bully. I taught most of the boys in your form. They were all right till Ivory got hold of them. Have you ever been bullied?
- Mrs. Seymour: [on Ivory] He was a monster. I mean... Blackwell's an animal, a brute. But Ivory was the devil himself!
- Win Thursday: [over dinner] You're not still fretting over Morse?
- DCI Fred Thursday: No. I've set him on his way.
- Win Thursday: Good. Got some room for rice pud?
- DCI Fred Thursday: Skin on? Smashing!
- DCI Fred Thursday: Don't get caught on the wrong side, Eddie. You're no good to your boy banged up - or worse. Coldwater must be a pricey touch.
- Eddie Nero: You leave Brett out of this!
- DCI Fred Thursday: For now. Mind how you go.
- DS Endeavour Morse: Any more on Ivory's shirt?
- Dr. Max DeBryn: Twenty-three separate stab wounds. Any one of a dozen could have been fatal, depending on the depth of penetration of the blade.
- DS Endeavour Morse: But it was his blood group?
- Dr. Max DeBryn: Oh, yes. And made to his measurements by a bespoke tailor in Jermyn Street. You've no idea who left it in your desk?
- DS Endeavour Morse: No. Nor why.
- DS Endeavour Morse: My wife said she saw you in the woods with some of the boys.
- Alun Bodnar: Ah... yes.
- DS Endeavour Morse: She was under the impression some of them were high. Is there very much of that here - dope?
- Alun Bodnar: Well, Ivory used to go on holiday to Marrakesh every summer. I think he used to bring a bit back with him.
- DS Endeavour Morse: What? He sold it to the boys?
- Alun Bodnar: [cynically] Got to underwrite his losses on the gee-gees somehow.