- DCI Fred Thursday: You're a third division shake-down artist and fourth-rate ponce. Always were, always will be. If there's any comeback over Joey, I'll have your cobblers for a key-fob. Mind how you go.
- DCI Fred Thursday: You're a good sergeant, Jim. Good man, too.
- DS Jim Strange: [embarrassed] Oh, I don't know about that, sir.
- DCI Fred Thursday: You took Morse in. There's not many would have done that.
- DS Jim Strange: He'd do the same for me.
- DCI Fred Thursday: Would he?
- DS Jim Strange: [laughing] He's a prickly bugger at the best of times. Just how he is.
- DCI Fred Thursday: So... Dr Grey was there, Simon Lake. Who else?
- Dr. Adrian Croxley: It's a secret society. As an officer of rank, I'm sure that's something you can respect.
- DCI Fred Thursday: A bunch of middle-aged academics, prancing around in pretty waistcoats, calling each other daft names? I've more time for the Tufty Club.
- Dr. Adrian Croxley: I beg your pardon?
- DCI Fred Thursday: You can beg my fat arse! Grow up, Dr Croxley. You're too old for the dressing-up box. There are no secrets as far as the law's concerned.
- Dr. Adrian Croxley: Well. Since you put it like that...
- DS Jim Strange: [after George Fancy has left] George seems a nice lad.
- DS Endeavour Morse: [disapprovingly] He's a cocky little sod.
- DS Jim Strange: Of course he is. He's young. All piss and vinegar. We were young once.
- DS Endeavour Morse: I'm still young.
- DS Jim Strange: If you say so.
- Chief Superintendent Reginald Bright: So two of the victims were members of this disgusting dining club? Weren't they? The... What is it?
- DCI Fred Thursday: The Berserkers, sir.
- Chief Superintendent Reginald Bright: The Berserkers. Sounds like a collection of absolute Philistines.
- Eve Thorne: [baiting Morse] When'd you get your leg over last? As a matter of interest.
- DS Endeavour Morse: None of your business.
- Eve Thorne: [laughing] That IS my business!
- DS Endeavour Morse: [interrogating Eve Thorne] Then you're a common prostitute?
- Eve Thorne: You've seen where I live. Nothing common about me.
- DCI Fred Thursday: They all wanted something they couldn't have, I suppose.
- DS Endeavour Morse: Doesn't everyone?
- DS Endeavour Morse: [told he must work with George Fancy] I'm used to working on my own, sir. He'd learn more from you.
- DCI Fred Thursday: I expect he would. But you've got rank now. That brings responsibilities. Get to know him a bit. It'll do him good.
- DCI Fred Thursday: [telling Eddie Nero about the death of Joey Sikes] He was found this morning with three bullets in him. And a spike in his shell-like.
- DS Jim Strange: [after DeBryn has examined the headless body] Anything, doc?
- Dr. Max DeBryn: Well, his head's in this room and his body's in that room. That might have something to do with it.
- DS Jim Strange: Anything as to a time, say?
- Dr. Max DeBryn: Within the last three to four hours. Looks to have had his throat cut first, from right to left. Then decapitation post mortem. Small mercies.
- DCI Fred Thursday: Would it have taken much force?
- Dr. Max DeBryn: No great strength required. Nerve, though. You're thinking of the lipstick.
- DS Endeavour Morse: Oh, the closest match I found was a color called Violent Crimson.
- Dr. Max DeBryn: From the Kiss of Death range, presumably.
- DCI Fred Thursday: [recalling his days on the Vice Squad] I had three years on Vice. Never agreed with me. Bodies bought and sold, lives ruined. Not much more than kids, most of them - runaways. You could see the sharks, the pimps and the ponces, queued up waiting for them at all the big stations. "Stand you a coffee, love?" - straight off the train, straight on the game. The worst of human nature, right there. It's no work for a family man.
- Dr. Max DeBryn: [surveying the corpse of Robin Grey, stabbed in both eyes] Aye, aye. Right first, then left. Sometime between eight and midnight.
- DS Endeavour Morse: Any defensive wound?
- Dr. Max DeBryn: Didn't see it coming. Quite literally.
- DCI Fred Thursday: Who was he?
- DS Endeavour Morse: His name is Robin Grey. He's a history don here. I met him yesterday - the attempted break-in.
- DS Jim Strange: Last seen by the porter, going out about six last night. No-one saw him come back.
- DS Endeavour Morse: [observing lipstick on Grey's mouth] Lipstick - same as Joey Sikes.
- DS Jim Strange: I know you're out of practice, matey, but most women wear it. Uniform are fetching his wife in.
- Dr. Max DeBryn: There is evidence of coitus.
- DS Endeavour Morse: [connecting the paintings illustrated in Eve's book to the murders] It's an artistic theme - powerful men brought down by women. Is that what this is about? Is that why they've been killed in such a specific manner?
- Eve Thorne: [smiling] How would I know? Unless I killed them.
- Chief Superintendent Reginald Bright: [finding Thursday studying a model of the new police headquarters] Tomorrow's world, Thursday.
- DCI Fred Thursday: Sir?
- Chief Superintendent Reginald Bright: A new divisional headquarters for Thames Valley, Kidlington.
- DCI Fred Thursday: Very smart, sir.
- Chief Superintendent Reginald Bright: Clean, modern, spacious. Computers - and an information room that would be the envy of any constabulary.
- DCI Fred Thursday: And... us, sir?
- Chief Superintendent Reginald Bright: No final decision has been reached on whether Cowley will remain open or if we'll be absorbed into the new station in Oxford Road.
- DCI Fred Thursday: Wouldn't have thought there'd be enough room for us all in there, sir.
- Chief Superintendent Reginald Bright: [sadly] No. Well, there we are. Ours not to reason why.
- DS Endeavour Morse: Anything?
- WPC Shirley Trewlove: Quiet as the proverbial.
- DS Endeavour Morse: Detective Constable Fancy. WPC Trewlove.
- DC George Fancy: George.
- WPC Shirley Trewlove: Pleased to meet you.
- DC George Fancy: What's a pretty girl like you doing in a place like this?
- WPC Shirley Trewlove: My job.
- DC George Fancy: Hard to get, eh?
- WPC Shirley Trewlove: Oh, you've no idea.
- DC George Fancy: I like a challenge.
- WPC Shirley Trewlove: Idiot.
- DC George Fancy: Blimey! She's a bit of all right! Don't you reckon?
- DS Endeavour Morse: Who, Constable Trewlove? She's a very capable officer. Doesn't suffer fools.
- Chief Superintendent Reginald Bright: Three men slaughtered with such violence - you're surely not saying a woman could have done it?
- Eddie Nero: [Thursday is trying to arrest him] On what charge?
- DCI Fred Thursday: Procurement. Or conspiring to corrupt public morals. Take your pick. Either way, you're nicked.
- DCI Fred Thursday: How did you meet Dr Grey?
- Lucy Grey: At a drinks party... last February. Two months later we were married.
- DS Endeavour Morse: You had no reason to doubt his fidelity? Just with his body being found the way it was, we've, well, we're bound to ask.
- Lucy Grey: How was it found?
- DCI Fred Thursday: There was lipstick around his mouth. And signs that physical intimacy had taken place shortly before his death.
- Lucy Grey: I always knew Robin had lived... a full life. But from the moment we were married, he never once gave me any cause to think of him as anything other than devoted.
- DS Endeavour Morse: [finding Fancy listening to pop music on his car radio whilst maintaining surveillance on Eve Thorne] Is this your idea of discreet observation? It's an unmarked car, not a concert hall!
- DC George Fancy: Yeah, all right.
- DS Endeavour Morse: Just keep your mind on the job and make sure she doesn't try to leave.
- DC George Fancy: Is she likely to?
- DS Endeavour Morse: [handing over items of evidence] When you're relieved, get these booked in to Forensics at the station. Did you get the contents of Joey Sikes's suitcase booked in?
- DC George Fancy: [he hasn't done this] Ohhh...
- DS Endeavour Morse: Is this what I've got to look forward to? If I want something doing, I've got to do it myself?
- DC George Fancy: I forgot.
- DS Endeavour Morse: You're not paid to forget. You're paid to remember.
- Dr. Adrian Croxley: I must say, we were all positively chartreuse at Robin's good luck, bagging a Matilda beast. And a rowing blue to boot. Nothing in the world quite compares to a sporty girl. Strong in the wrist and firm in the hams.
- DS Endeavour Morse: Do you think that kind of talk's appropriate about a young woman widowed not an hour since?
- Dr. Adrian Croxley: She'd have to have been a very Messalina to keep Robin down on the farm.
- DS Endeavour Morse: Is that right?
- Dr. Adrian Croxley: Quite a dog in his day. Wet his nib in any ink pot. Take my word. They'll be queuing halfway up the High to offer their "condolences."
- DS Endeavour Morse: [doubting that "The Shadow" is responsible for a bungled robbery attempt] For a cracksman of international renown, it's hardly a case of now-you-see-me-now-you-don't.
- Lucy Grey: Was I a fool, Tancred?
- Dr. Tancred Howlett: Never.
- Lucy Grey: Fooled, then.
- Dr. Tancred Howlett: There's only one fool here. And it was never you.
- Dr. Tancred Howlett: What happened, do you think?
- Dr. Adrian Croxley: I don't think, Tancred. And you shouldn't, either.
- DCI Fred Thursday: [about Eve Thorne] There's two options. Either she did it, or she knows who did it. Either way, I want her under observation.
- DCI Fred Thursday: [suspicious, after interviewing Mrs. Grey] She wouldn't be the first wife to not know her husband was deceiving her. Unless she did, of course.