Ahead, the road fell away into white. The rain had grown so heavy that Chandler was sure the windows would be covered in scratches by the time that they reached their destination. Its rattle tapped on every surface like restless fingers, the shell of the car dangerously thin between them and the downpour. The windscreen was a deluge, no matter how quickly the wipers struggled, frantic, across it.

Miles kept driving, his jaw like a bulldog's, stubborn and uncompromising. Every time he changed gear, the vehicle thudded, juddering the bones of the occupants, and no one spoke to cover it. They had nothing to speak about.

Chandler sat in the passenger seat and tried not to think about how this was the longest he had ever heard his DCs go without talking, or about the piece of paper that he hadn't known what to do with, about the shadow of an old woman in headlamps.

Team-building, Anderson had told him. That meant you're broken. And they were. They had started fracturing almost as soon as he had arrived, so long ago, all ties and frustration. He hadn't expected to stay for so long. But, with the papers that he hadn't quite started to fill out, it wouldn't be much longer.

"Maybe the rain will stop," Buchan said hopefully, banished to what, with both seats down, would have been the boot, their luggage piled precariously up beside him. It was a desperate attempt to start conversation, and it fell through before it had even reached the back seat proper, muffled by the silence that held court there. DC Riley had placed herself between Kent and Mansell, but seemed unwilling to speak with either of them, staring stubbornly straight ahead while they glared out of a window each, a Whitechapel CID coat of arms.

Chandler's tongue had grown too used to having nothing to say to etch itself into a reply, and Buchan glanced down, as if accepting that there was nothing that he could do about the quiet.

"Turn left," the SatNav ordered, and Miles did as he was told.

He hoped the silence was just the shock, or the rain, forcing all other sounds away. That somehow, his DCs had forgiven one another or been brought back together in the face of adversity. But the worst possibility lurked in his brain like a tumour, the idea that they had managed to fracture further and deeper than could ever be repaired.

Something constricted in Kent's pale throat, and his eyes turned away from the window. Chandler met them, realised that he had been looking back for more than the four seconds acceptable in the wake of Buchan's comment, and jerked his head back to facing the front.

Ahead, a distant, blurred shape struggled to resolve itself from the rain, distorted in the water until it might have been anything. A gargoyle, clawing its way out of the earth, Chandler thought distractedly, and then tried to find something, anything, else. Its aspect cleared as Miles brought them closer. A tall building, buttressed against the wind, given spines by the rivulets of rain on the glass.

He narrowed his eyes at a sign too covered in moss for him to pick out lettering, trying to read it anyway, but gave in as the wheels of the car scudded a slurry of water up over the window.

"Arriving at destination on left," the SatNav informed them, then silenced itself with a disappointed-sounding bleep.

Miles turned into what Chandler hoped was a driveway, the car indicator's flash glancing off the raindrops and struggling back toward home. The engine cut out abruptly, and they sat and stared at the house, the hope that Miles had put the postcode in wrong visible in the creasing on their foreheads.

There was a movement from the side of the building, and a humbug-striped umbrella appeared, bobbing its way toward the car. It stopped at the drivers' side, a black-gloved hand emerging from beneath to knock.

The window whirred down, though there was barely a crack of fresh air before it whined to a halt. Chandler's jaw tightened, convinced that it felt the splash of the rain onto his features anyway.

"Detective Inspector Chandler?" demanded the umbrella, voice twisting into a Welsh lilt.

Miles indicated Chandler shortly with a jerk of one hand. "He is. DS Miles. These are DCs Riley, Kent and Mansell, and Mister Buchan."

"Thornton. Welcome to Tŷ Gors," the umbrella said blandly. "I'm sure you're all very glad to see it. It's what, five hours from Whitechapel?"

"Took us six," Miles replied, tactfully ignoring the former. "You have any more umbrellas?"

"It's only water," the umbrella announced, lifting enough for Chandler to catch a glimpse of the bearer's impressive chin. "Would you like to come inside?"

There was a moment of hesitation, then Mansell slammed his door open and scrambled ungracefully out. Kent and Riley were gone a moment later, and before their seatbelts had finished sliding away, Miles was ducking under their host's umbrella.

Chandler made to join them, only for a sudden clattering from the boot to yank his attention back around. Buchan had stood up, shouldering into Riley's bag, but seemed at a loss as to what else to do.

"Um, Joe, how do I get out?" he called, voice mottled with hesitations.

"There are instructions on the back of the seat in front," Chandler informed him, turning his collar up and stepping out into the downpour. The first few wet impacts against his head were like miniature slaps, and he cursed his lack of foresight in not bringing an umbrella of his own.

By the time he reached the porch, the rain had soaked through to his skin, and he was convinced that he could feel its brackish taste in his mouth. Blinking the moisture from his eyes, he gave the narrow hallway a cursory glance, and decided that the days could not possibly go quickly enough. The cinderblock of the walls was pockmarked and scratched, and he did his best not to look at the ceiling, where he knew he would see damp and cobwebs.

"Pauline's just finishing up with dinner," their host announced, hooking his umbrella onto a peg. For a moment, Chandler considered leaving his coat in the same place, but the dust that billowed into the air in the wake of Thornton's movement convinced him otherwise.

"I'll show you to your rooms, and if you like you can change your clothes, then we can eat." Thornton paused for a moment, as if trying to remember something, then reached a box down from a shelf. "Phones, please."

"What do you want our phones for?" Mansell demanded, hand going protectively to his pocket and hovering there.

"We find that phones tend to provide an excuse not to acknowledge the existence of other humans." Their host opened the box with a snarl of hinges, revealing an old Nokia rattling around in the bottom. His voice changed, some of the lightness burning away. "Phones, please."

Buchan was the first to surrender his, and the others gave theirs up with narrow eyes.

Their host smiled pleasantly, regimented teeth showing. "There's no signal here, anyway," he said, his tones returning to their former pleasantness. "If you need to make any personal calls, we have a landline. Ask Pauline if you need it." With that, he closed the box with a noise that sounded like a full stop, locked it, and returned it to its shelf. "There. No need for you to worry about them going missing."

"Our bags?" Miles inquired, glancing back outside without enthusiasm.

"Pauline will fetch them," their host announced. He was older than Chandler had been expecting. Beneath the sagging flesh of his face, his skull moved with the words, slack skin pooling in his eye-sockets. "If you would all follow me."

Thornton approached the stairs like someone whose feet had been replaced by twin wooden clubs, the noise of them ricocheting up into the beams. The steps creaked under his tread, and Chandler eyed them dubiously.

"It's perfectly safe," Thornton informed them, without turning.

Miles shook his head and followed, and the others trailed after him. Mansell's hand still lingered, bereft, over where his phone had been, as if he had envisaged spending the whole time texting with Erica like a technologically savvy turtle-dove.

They crowded onto the first floor landing as Thornton indicated the doors at the end, and then those closer to the stairs. "DS Miles, DC Kent, DI Chandler, Mister Buchan, this is your floor. DC Riley, DC Mansell, follow me, you're upstairs, I hope neither of you has a problem with heights."

For a moment, Chandler stood where he had stopped, and then he moved to try the door that Thornton had directed him to. The handle was cold against his skin, and he shivered reflexively, but it turned easily enough, without the protesting squeal that he had half-expected.

The room beyond was, thankfully, clean and ordered. A bed against one wall, a cabinet beside it, and not a whole lot else. Painted off-white, it seemed catalogue-new, almost unfinished. Even the books lining the bottom of the cupboard, had creaseless spines. He almost picked one of them up, but the dripping of the rain from his sleeves convinced him otherwise.

Chandler left his coat over a swallow-tail hook on the back of the bathroom door, finding himself more or less dry underneath, and went to see if the mysterious Pauline needed any help with the bags. They were waiting just outside his room. Frowning, he glanced up and down the landing, but there was no one in sight. Only the others' luggage, left neatly beside their doors, like his.

He withdrew, carrying his bags inside before he headed back downstairs. The steps whined with the pressure as if they had been riddled with woodworm, but there was no give and, as far as he could see, no holes.

The others were waiting in the dining room, sitting around a table that didn't look affordable on the budget of a team-building centre, all deep mahogany swirls and immaculately polished gleam. Chandler took a seat next to Miles and glanced suspiciously at the platters of food that were already lined up in the centre of the table.

"This Pauline is more efficient than all the serving staff in all the pubs in Whitechapel," Buchan announced, as if he were attempting to lighten the mood. No one responded. The smiles that they had sported when it seemed as if they had broken their curse had been shocked away, and Chandler couldn't imagine that there was potential for any of them to resurface.

Thornton strode into the room before the silence could stretch into a tacky breaking point, and took the seat at the head of the table, gesturing at their plates with a sweeping arm.

"Please," he said, in a tone of voice that was butler-perfect. "Serve yourselves."

There was a flurry of movement almost before the words had left his mouth. Chandler hung back, unwilling to compete with the others' jousting arms and lacking what even a generous person might have called an appetite.

"So, we out doing the thing with the balls and the pipes at dawn, then?" Miles asked, heaping his plate with potatoes.

"Not in this weather," Thornton replied, delicately selecting a piece of broccoli.

"Building the bridge with three slightly too short planks?" Miles suggested, jerking his head at Chandler. "He'll be able to do it, he's done a lot of courses."

"I'm afraid the closest we get to the conventional team building methods are a couple of trust exercises," Thornton informed him, knife slicing delicately into a piece of meat, cooked rare. The colour of it brought back a vivid image of Llewellyn's autopsy room, and Chandler swallowed uncomfortably.

"What do you do, then?" Miles demanded, and his voice could have been lifted straight from the interrogation room tape.

"Have you ever read The Shining?"

Buchan's cutlery hit his plate, the sharp guillotine-clatter cutting the conversation away to silence. His widened eyes glinted like marbles in the scant light.

"I've seen the film," Mansell piped up, and the moment was gone. Thornton's teeth edged out into his smile.

"We find that the isolation and close quarters build a team better than any number of bridges." Thornton shrugged widely, light glancing off his cutlery with the movement. "That, or everyone kills each other."

Chandler did his best to laugh into the silence that followed, hoping that that was the reaction their host had been hoping for.

"Of course, before any of you do decide to commit murder," Thornton added, brightly. "Please bear in mind that you would die of exposure before reaching the nearest town, while making your escape."

"Duly noted," Miles muttered. "Won't Pauline be joining us?"

"No." Thornton delivered a shred of meat to his mouth and chewed it. "So, I hear things have been quite exciting in Whitechapel recently – the Ripper, the Krays, monsters in the walls. I'm surprised they didn't send you here sooner. Do you know who's doing your job while you're away?"

"I was assured that it was being taken care of," Chandler said, though Anderson hadn't told him who. Whoever they were, they wouldn't be using the station; someone was finally there to fix the issues with the building.

"Of course, of course." Thornton peered down toward the other end of the table, where the others were eating in silence, Kent's fork half-heartedly stabbing a carrot around his plate. "Your colleagues are very quiet."

"Bad case," Miles told him shortly.

"Aren't they all," Thornton mused, his mouthful evidently gone, though Chandler hadn't seen him swallow. "All of yours, anyway. Never brought in a man alive, as I understand it."

Chandler gritted his teeth as the dinner suddenly became as unpleasant as the one he had attended with Anderson during the Ripper case. The others' cutlery paused, as if everyone were holding their breath.

"We've saved lives," Kent announced, without looking up from his plate, though the carrot was granted a temporary reprieve.

"There are people who are alive at this moment who wouldn't be were it not for us," Buchan agreed quickly, brandishing his fork somewhere between making a point and threatening. "For example, the last victim of the New Ripper."

Chandler wondered for a moment whether or not they were just doing their best to make him feel better. He knew that the trend of bodies had started from the moment he had joined Whitechapel CID. And there was a part of him that, no matter how much he tried to rationalise, refused to believe in any coincidence. The word curse was more acceptable to it.

"I didn't mean to offend," Thornton said blandly. "I'm sure that if there were anyone better to do the job, they would have replaced you years ago."

Somehow, he managed to make the compliment sound like an insult.

No one seemed to want to continue a conversation with him after that, and they ate in silence for a while, Chandler trying to force a slice of cottony Yorkshire pudding down his throat.

"Getting a bit gloomy, isn't it?" Thornton commented eventually, and stood to light the heavy candlestick in the centre of the table, the flame's reflection flickering in the brass. "Oh, and speaking of the dark, I must apologise if you hear sounds during the night. The piping's a bit old and it rattles sometimes. We've tried getting the plumber in, but there's very little incentive for him to come out here when he has plenty of jobs in town. That reminds me, if anyone starts feeling ill, let me know as soon as you can, it takes a while for Doctor Black to drive out here. Better for him to have a wasted journey than for one of you to start coughing up your lungs, and him be too far away."

At the other end of the table, Riley carefully put her cutlery down.

"Is everything alright with your rooms?" Thornton inquired, as if he didn't believe that his last glut of information required any digestion. "We do our best with them, but we still get complaints every now and again."

"Mine is fine," Buchan volunteered, and there was a vague affirmative murmuring from the rest of the diners.

"Power cuts are likely," Thornton went on, settling back into his seat and glancing at his hands as if he were trying to remember something. There was a red smudge over the back of his knuckles, and he hastily covered it with his other palm. "There should be candles and matches in your cabinets, and, if you need anything, Pauline and I are in the rooms upstairs."

"When do we start?" Chandler asked abruptly. For a moment, the sound of his own voice, absent for what felt like the last hour, startled him.

"Oh, we've already started," Thornton informed him, lips twisting with a puppet's smile. "But you can turn in, if you like. It's getting late, and I think that's everything that I needed to tell you."

He had pushed his chair out almost before the other man had finished speaking. It didn't matter whether it was an early start or not, he supposed. He couldn't stand another minute in Thornton's company.

The stairs were creaking underfoot before he realised that he hadn't said goodnight to Miles, or to anyone, and that perhaps he should have. Too late now, he decided, as his fingers reached out to close over the warm metal of his door handle.

Inside, he plucked a book from the cabinet without looking and settled on to the end of his bed, the sudden lack of company crushing its silence through his head in a way as overwhelming as an ocean wave. Glancing down, he found To Kill A Mockingbird, and he started to read. Or tried to, anyway. Every few minutes, one of the sentences failed and stuttered out in his brain, a noise like a dripping tap ratcheting along his consciousness.