The sound of his laughter echoed through the room, but his eyes remained cold and distant. Suddenly the videotape was paused, silencing the laughter so that that all he could hear was the pounding of his heart beat in his ears.

In his peripheral vision the face crept closer until it was once again inches from the side of his, the overly familiar odour of stale coffee and bad breath sending a reflexive shiver down his spine.

He continued to stare straight ahead, emotionless, as the screen in front of him was frozen on a happier time, his beaming smile framed by black and white lines of horizontal static. Internally and externally he felt numb. Numb from the beatings, numb from the questions. It felt never-ending. Even when he had been capable of answering the barrage of questions the answers made no difference to the outcome. Every strike to the face or body only reinforced that his responses weren’t sufficient in their eyes.

“I’m rapidly running out of patience here…” The voice came again, the sound seemingly hitting the side of his head more than entering his ear. If he’d been less beaten down he’d have noted that patience wasn’t a virtue that had been in evidence at any point leading up to this. “I’m going to ask one final time, and if I don’t get the information I need outta you you’re done, d’you hear me..?”

The futility of the situation had ground him down to nothing. At this point he just needed it to be over.

“Where… is… she..?”

He’d been asked the question so many times his Pavlovian response was to brace for the subsequent impact after his answer had remained the same every time. This time the questioning voice almost sounded implicitly defeated.

He didn’t answer straight away, hesitating as he tried to muster the ability to speak, the slightest movement in his aching jaw reinvigorating the metallic taste of stale blood in his mouth.

As he paused, his eyes slowly scanned across the picture in front of him, from one joyous smile to another. A smile that had always been the one that could get him through anything, the one he came home to after a long day and within seconds had helped all the troubles and worries melt away. He’d watched this video so many times in the subsequent years, always amazed that no matter how beautiful he’d found her since they met, on their wedding day she’d reached a whole new level, and all the songs, all the poetry, and all the art in the world could never have done her justice.

Now the video had taken on a whole new meaning, the pain of her being missing more acute than anything he’d suffered in that room. He wished more than ever he knew where she was – for something to tell them, and to give him a reason to look forwards.