Chapter Two
The Ballerina and the Brave Tin Soldier
The guitar was playing again in Amelia's dream. She woke up, her body jolting abruptly. She could still hear the tune playing. Closing her eyes in the dark, she calmed her breathing and the music disappeared, like a clearing mist.
Glancing to her left she saw that the clock was flashing 3.30am at her, and she groaned, knowing in a few hours she had to be up and on the subway.
Why did her head still feel like it was spinning?
Spinning. Amelia suddenly shook her head. It was like when you remembered a piece of a dream and your desperately scrabbling bits of a puzzle together to make a whole, except she knew this wasn't a dream, it was a memory.
Spinning. Spinning around. Her dress flying around her.
No being spun, someone was spinning her around. She was dancing, but not alone.
This was a first. She felt like she had uncovered a piece of a memory.
After the accident, the doctors said that Amelia, then only thirteen years old had gone into trauma. What she had witnessed had been so dramatic that her system couldn't handle it and she shut down. For three months she didn't speak.
Her parents at that time still married, opted to put her into a hospital temporarily and for the next fifth teen years, Amelia underwent so many different types of therapy that at times she was unsure what was real and what wasn't. She didn't know what she had imagined and what doctors had implanted there in her mind.
Some doctors tried to coax the information from her, others tried to suppress it, until at the age of twenty five and still no wiser, Amelia called a halt and tried to get on with her life.
Now swiftly approaching her thirties, Amelia only turned to counselling if she really needed help, a place to go and let off steam, she hadn't acquired many friends over the years. After loosing Rachel and then her Mother's suicide, it was like the combined trauma was causing 'things' to come back to her, pieces of memory like fragmented glass, such as the guitar, and now this.
If Amelia was to search the internet on details of the accident fifteen years ago, she would find the basic story that was known world wide.
On Halloween night 1993 a well known and wanted serial killer, Harold Napier broke into the home of film actress Siren West and her husband Abbott West and held the star and her then thirteen year old daughter hostage for three whole days. He was demanding three million dollars for their release, but what he hadn't bargained for was Abbott's policy of zero tolerance and he refused to pay the money, leaving his wife and daughter in incredible danger. What went on in the apartment for those three days, very little was known except in the end it finished brutally, with Napier shot dead and Siren viscously attacked, her face carved and butchered.
Abbott West made no apology not paying the money, he was not a man to be crossed and felt that by giving Napier what he wanted he was in turn funding more terror in the future. He also claimed after much public criticism that the whole time the Gotham police urged him not to give in as they believed Napier had already killed the women.
The details of the hostage situation, over the years had become the subject of a great amount of speculation as of course, no body was talking. Napier was dead, Siren virtually had become a recluse and Amelia didn't remember.
There were hundreds of web sites dedicated to discussing possible theories. Some people believed that Siren killed Napier with his own gun; others thought that it had been Amelia and she had blocked it out.
Amelia swung her legs over the side of the bed, knowing now that sleep would never come. She was hot and padded bare foot to the kitchen, the tiles cool on her feet.
She took a glass from the cabinet and filled it with cold water, drinking it down greedily, suddenly very thirsty.
Walking swiftly back down the corridor to her bedroom, she stopped abruptly in the darkened hall, staring at the front door. There was a thin, flat parcel on her door mat.
Amelia froze to the spot, her legs suddenly like lead, and the water tumbler trembling in her hand.
Her apartment was on the thirty second floor. She didn't have deliveries; they were left in a locked mail box downstairs. And yet there it was, sitting there waiting for her.
Swallowing hard, she lunged for the switch on the wall and the hall way was immersed in bright light. She ran to the bedroom and scrambled for her gun in her bedside cabinet.
Shaking she reached for her mobile phone and was relieved when the warm familiar voice answered.
"Bruce…someone's been in here" she babbled down the phone.
"Have you got a gun?"
"Yes,"
"Then lock yourself in somewhere and don't move till I get there,"
"How will you get in?" she asked turning on every light she could, making her way to the bathroom.
"I'll get in, don't worry about that,"
A fast twenty minutes later, that to Amelia locked in her bathroom felt like a life time and Bruce was in her apartment.
Still trembling, Amelia was on the couch, sipping water and staring down at the crudely wrapped package.
"I've checked every where and it looks like there was a forced entry on your front door, it was so smooth that you wouldn't have heard it. Some one knew what they were doing alright,"
"Oh Bruce…don't say that!" still in her pyjamas, Amelia hugged him tightly.
"Have you called your father?" he asked, his face grey with worry, he sat down beside her on the couch.
"No,"
"Then you'll come to my house, pack some clothes now and we'll go,"
Not bothering to argue, Amelia grabbed a few clothes and her lap top. Ten minutes later they were out the door at in Bruce's Aston Martin.
"Have you opened it?" he asked gesturing to the parcel that Amelia was still holding tightly.
"I thought we could do it at your house?" she said quietly and Bruce nodded, taking a back road that plunged them into a forest and out of the city limits.
Wayne Manor rose out of the mist and Amelia felt a comfort from seeing it standing proudly there, it had just been newly rebuilt after the fire there last year.
"It's still a beautiful home," she whispered as Bruce pulled her up at the front door.
There was a light shining from inside and the door opened.
A much older, grey haired man stood in the doorway and he smiled warmly when he saw her.
Amelia beamed and jumped out of the car.
"Alfred!" she flew into his out stretched arms, "It's so good to see you,"
"And you Miss," he hugged her tightly, "But not under these circumstances. Are you alright?"
"Yes," she breathed, "Nobody hurt me but someone got in to my home. We haven't opened the parcel yet,"
Bruce joined them in the warm hallway and he put his hand on Amelia's shoulder.
"Alfred, would you get Miss West a drink while we look at this thing?"
"Very good sir, I'll put Miss West's belongings in the Rose suite sir,"
Amelia followed Bruce into a large wood panelled room, lined with famous, beautiful paintings. There was a large open fire and Amelia took a seat near it, still freezing from being in her night clothes.
Bruce hadn't said anything but there was something familiar about the way the package was wrapped and especially the writing on the front. It was written in large childish handwriting, stating simply 'For Miss West'.
It wasn't until Alfred came in with a large tray of tea and biscuits that they realised that they had both been staring at the package, lost in their own thoughts.
"Let's do it," Bruce said and Amelia reached for it.
She tore open the paper and was surprised at what she found.
It was a book.
"It's a children's book," she said slowly, "Look, I recognise it…."
"The Brave Tin Soldier," Alfred said, looming above them, he had gingerly watched them open it.
"I know that story," Bruce said, "Its sad,"
But Amelia said nothing. She was too busy with the note that had been left tapped to the inside of the packaging.
Shakily she read it to them, it was written in the same scrawled hand writing.
"Miss West, Do you remember how to dance? J,"
Bruce looked at Amelia, who was far too immersed in the note to see the worried glance he exchanged with Alfred.
"J?" Amelia said more to herself.
Alfred sat beside them. "Does the book mean anything to you Miss?"
She shook her head. "I think I know the story, but it was a long time ago..."
"Its quite a famous children's story, there are lots of different versions, I'm surprised if you haven't heard it," Bruce said, "A tin soldier, imperfect, with only one leg because the toy maker didn't have enough tin to make him one, he falls in love with a beautiful ballerina, but the wizard causes him to fall from the nursery window. He goes though all kinds of obstacles to make it back to her, and when he does, the wizard makes the wind to blow strong, knocking him into the fire. But the ballerina jumps him after him and they melt, together at last,"
"Wait!" Amelia jumped, "Ballerina…."
Something was pricking, a memory, like a shaft of light breaking through a dark tunnel.
"What is it?" Bruce said urgently.
"Ballerina….that's got to mean me….spinning….dancing….dammit!" she whacked the couch arm with her hand in frustration, "What does this mean?"
"Only you know that Miss," Alfred said, patting her shoulder, "I'll get you some tea,"
"Someone wants me to remember the accident?" Amelia said suddenly cold, "But everything is so dark. This story, it's so familiar…I know I have read it, but I can't remember…"
"Did one of your parents read it to you?" Bruce asked as Alfred placed a china cup on the coffee table in front of him.
"No, I read it to someone; I can remember reading it aloud," She shook her head, "Maybe in school or something?"
Bruce poured her some tea and took her hand in his.
"You're freezing, you need to sleep,"
Amelia turned the book over in her hands, willing memories to the surface.
"I'll never get to sleep, now," she whispered but Bruce smiled to himself knowing that soon the effects of Alfred's special 'tea' would soon be having. He needed Amelia to be out like a light.
It was pretty quiet out here and the house made noises at night, which could leave her even more awake and curious.
Only a few minutes later, Bruce was carrying Amelia upstairs to the Rose Suite, where Alfred was waiting to turn back the bed.
Shutting the door quietly after them, they exchanged worried looks.
"It can't be who you suspect Master Wayne," Alfred said quietly as they headed for the hidden lift at the end of the first floor corridor.
Closing the heavy wooden panel behind them, the lift glided smoothly downwards until they could both smell the mist in the air and damp, cold air wafted up to greet them.
The cave was dark, but with a flick of a switch it was illuminated, the giant array of technology whirring to life. Bruce had access to every security camera in Gotham. He could listen to every communication between the Gotham Police force.
He sat numbly at his desk and tapped in the code for the security system at Arkham.
Immediately twelve images appeared before him, various sections of the hospital he liked to have monitored. Some of them were the holding cells. He rotated the camera to the cell he was most intrigued with.
And there he was. Bruce had to suppress a shiver when he looked at the figure curled up in the bottom left hand corner of the cell.
"He hasn't gone anywhere Master Bruce," Alfred said, standing beside him, "What makes you think that he would have anything to do with Amelia?"
"A bad feeling Alfred. I hate them, don't you? But there not often unwarranted,"
"How can Miss West have anything to do with The Joker, sir? We know nothing about him,"
"Exactly," Bruce said narrowing his eyes at the monster on the film, "We don't know anything about this man. We don't know his past, where he was born, who his family was. So really, he could have everything to do with Amelia,"
"Or this is another one of his games sir? But how could he have gotten the book out?"
"One of his goons could have easily arranged that. We'll know when we check the DNA on the note. Don't forget that this guy is always ten steps ahead of us. He'll want Amelia to know it was him, it wouldn't be as much fun for him otherwise,"
"So you're saying he wants to be caught?"
"Of course…look at what happened the night Harvey was taken and Rachel…" he trailed off not wanting to say the words 'when Rachel died'.
"The point is Alfred, he wanted me there and he planned the whole thing, it was all a game. That's the thing about the Joker, you're in his game and playing for your life before you've even begun,"
The camera in the Joker's cell shifted, motion sensitive. It made a noise and when Bruce and Alfred looked back at the screen the Joker was standing in the middle of the room, staring soullessly up at the camera. He grinned at them, almost as if he knew they were watching.