CHAPTER Twenty-Two

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

Sam had been in the room above the pub ever since. Though he’d watched the footage more times than he could remember, he’d never seen the exact same sequence twice. The footage changed every time he watched it. That’s why he’d never been able to edit it.

To begin with the changes were quite subtle, but in time everything was different from the first time he saw it. At first Sam noticed how the blurry, shadow figures altered the way they tortured the three victims. They seemed to get crueller, more extreme and increasingly creative in the ways they flayed and dismembered them.

After this, the victims began to change, the two men he’d originally seen with Melissa were replaced with others, including the men who’d been in the lock up with Ashkan. The only constant throughout the whole of Sam’s viewing was the presence of Melissa. That and the almost transcendent way she bore the torture of the blurred figures.

In time Sam began to suspect that the footage itself had