The Offence (1973)

Sean Connery: Johnson

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Quotes 

• [first lines] 

  Detective Sergeant Johnson : God! Oh God!

• Detective Sergeant Johnson : I had to kill him.

• Detective Sergeant Johnson : Help me!

  Kenneth Baxter : You're hurting me.

  Detective Sergeant Johnson : Help me!

  Kenneth Baxter : [breaks free from Johnson]  Help you yourself!

  [Johnson punches him] 

• Detective Sergeant Johnson : If you could put your hands inside my head. Hold it. Make it stop. Tell it 'stop'. If you could somehow cut out the thoughts, the pictures, the noise. The noise. The endless, screaming panic. If you could make silence, peace, and stop. Oh, if you could. A man without a face. Burned away his face: Acid. They'd tied him to a chair. He knew, they thought he knew. Something to do with money; I can't remember. He was in this room. He had no face. And -- I didn't know what to do. How to make it stop. The pain, and the screaming, I didn't know. Red on white. Timmy Miles. 'The man had a thin willow cane,' Timmy told us. 'For naughty boys,' the man said. But if Timmy was a good boy, and did what the man told him to do, the things. The filthy, obscene things, things the man told him to do. Things. 'He was so well spoken,' Timmy told us. 'Posh.' Eight years old. Blue eyes. Fair hair cut short, fresh complexion. Wearing a school blazer. Badge on the breast pocket. Grey trousers, white shirt. School tie. Missing for three days. The man had him. The posh man. For three days. She was dead when we found her. She was dead. The wheels of the train had cut one leg off -- just above the knee. It was still there when we arrived, beside the line, the girl half a mile away. She'd crawled afterward. After the train had cut. She crawled -- God knows where she thought she was going; she didn't get there. Of course she had wanted to die, so that was all right. The girl, she was dead. She went through the windscreen; her bloke got the steering wheel. His mother said he was up climbing after the cat. And the railings? The railings just happened to be there when he fell. Just so. Perfect. The bloke didn't know what he was doing, what he'd invited. He'd used twice too much jelly on the safe, painted the walls with his mates, with himself. The girl was pregnant. And she wasn't married, didn't have anyone, you know, to talk to. She went into the woods. Deep into this wood. And hanged herself. That was winter. Early winter, November they reckon. Sometime. We cut her down in March. Running down streets, back alleys, standing in doorways. The girl, the boy, the bloke, the boy, the girl. The girl. It's always night. No one there. Silent, empty. People dying. No one. Bloody dying, no one. Oh, I've seen it. Three weeks in the water. Hung up on a branch? Hidden under a bush. There wasn't a lot left. A baby. You could tell it was a baby. You couldn't tell much else. We fished it out. Couldn't leave it there. Rotting. Go on rotting, I mean. Fished it out. No sweat. No fuss about the job. No trouble. Finding things people have lost. Thrown away.

• Detective Sergeant Johnson : [to his wife]  Why aren't you beautiful? You're not even pretty.

• [last lines] 

  Detective Sergeant Johnson : God! Oh God!