- DI Fred Thursday: Did you see the way the girl flinched when he put his hands on her?
- DC Endeavour Morse: Yes, I saw.
- DI Fred Thursday: Pot and free love, I suppose. Free love. In my experience, that's the most expensive kind there is.
- [Thursday, Morse and Jakes are sitting in a pub having a drink when WPC Trewlove comes in to report the results of some enquiries she has been making]
- DI Fred Thursday: [to Jakes] You sickening for something? A new WPC and no off-colour remarks from you? We'll be sending out for iron tablets!
- Dorothea Frazil: And there... I must leave you. My dinner companion.
- DC Endeavour Morse: A date, Miss Frazil?
- Dorothea Frazil: Well, I like to keep my hand in. You should try it sometime. Seriously. You're looking uncared for.
- DC Endeavour Morse: Detective Constable Morse, City Police.
- Marion Brooke: Guilty conscience?
- DC Endeavour Morse: How's that?
- Marion Brooke: A policeman donating to AmnOx? Your lot are usually more at home breaking up our demos and arresting lawful protestors.
- DC Endeavour Morse: You should be safe today. My rubber truncheon's at the menders.
- Chief Superintendent Reginald Bright: [welcoming Trewlove to the station] My door is - well - if not exactly always open, then not infrequently ajar.
- DI Fred Thursday: [after Gideon Finn has quoted scripture to him] "Consider the lilies of the field"? Come that old madam with me and he'll be considering my boot up his arse!
- DC Endeavour Morse: [amused] You won't be signing up, then?
- DI Fred Thursday: There's nothing wrong with that one that two weeks in the glasshouse and a scrub-down with carbolic wouldn't put right!
- DS Peter Jakes: [he and Morse have found Verity imprisoned in a cell - with a ticking bomb] Got to get that bar we used on the way in. We need something for leverage. I'll do what I can in the meantime with elbow grease.
- DC Endeavour Morse: You go - I'll stay.
- DS Peter Jakes: It's not a debate. That thing goes off, it could bring the whole bloody place down.
- DC Endeavour Morse: [knowing Jakes is engaged to marry] You've got something to lose!
- DS Peter Jakes: Till the end of the week, I'm still your senior. So, get! Go on!
- Annette Richardson: I really was thinking of Verity. I could have been... something more. But you meet someone. The wedding dress becomes the christening gown, and before you know where you are it's 20 years. You wonder if those bright summer mornings ever happened at all. I didn't want that for my daughter.
- DC Endeavour Morse: But it wasn't your choice to make.
- Chief Superintendent Reginald Bright: [finding several officers are on sick leave] You're all right, are you?
- DI Fred Thursday: As ninepence, sir. Touch wood.
- Dr. Max DeBryn: [taking his first look at the corpse] Runners and riders once I've completed the post-mortem.
- Annette Richardson: [after the kidnapping] It's a judgment, Leo. God sees all.
- Leo Richardson: A bit late to start bringing Him into it.
- DC Endeavour Morse: [discussing the Richardsons] A happy family, would you say?
- Prudence Maddox: No more or less than any other. Leo makes money. Annette spends it. That seems enough.
- Ivor Maddox: Unless there was anything else?
- DC Endeavour Morse: Oh actually, there is another matter. One of your customers collapsed on the street yesterday afternoon. Possibly this stomach bug. Sadly, she died in the night.
- Ivor Maddox: You're not looking to lay that at our door, I hope.
- DC Endeavour Morse: No. Of course not.
- Cuthbert Mukamba: I'm suspected of what? We were exercising our lawful right to peaceful protest.
- DC Endeavour Morse: This morning a young mother bought a jar of baby food from Richardsons. It was laced with broken glass. She came this close to feeding it to her child.
- Cuthbert Mukamba: That is... barbaric. But you cannot imagine it was anything to do with us.
- DC Endeavour Morse: People have done far worse in the name of one thing or another.
- DC Endeavour Morse: The house is secure. There's no-one here.
- Annette Richardson: Are you sure?
- DC Endeavour Morse: Yes.
- Annette Richardson: Verity must have come home and then gone out again.
- DC Endeavour Morse: Right. Well, there we are. Mystery solved. Good night, Mrs Richardson.
- Ivor Maddox: Look, I've seen what resentment can do, Constable. First hand. My father, my grandfather both. Bitterness. Regret. It ate them from the inside out. Both dead by 40. No. Middle-management, middle of the batting order, middle of the road. There's a lot to be said for it.
- Leo Richardson: [after a threat has been received] Is there anything in it?
- Ivor Maddox: Who knows?
- Leo Richardson: Deal with it, Ivor. Christ, what do I pay you for? Remind me. You're a manager. Manage!
- Annette Richardson: [after Morse has refused the offer of a drink] Well, you're not very gallant.
- DC Endeavour Morse: So I've been told.
- Annette Richardson: Making a woman drink alone.
- DC Endeavour Morse: I expect you can manage on your own.