Stopping/pausing audio when button is clicked

I want to be able to play and pause an mp3 file on the click of a single button, what I currently have plays the audio, but if I click it again it does not stop it.

By what I’ve seen on another posts the method that does it is audio.pause(), but it has no effect in my code.

Code:

function playStop(){
                document.getElementById('playControl').style.visibility='visible';
                var audio = new Audio('mp3/audio.mp3');
                
                if (document.getElementById('playbtn').innerHTML=="❚❚"){
                    audio.pause();
                    audio.currentTime = 0;
                    document.getElementById('playbtn').innerHTML="▷";
                }
                else if(document.getElementById('playbtn').innerHTML=="▷"){
                    audio.play();                
                    document.getElementById('playbtn').innerHTML="❚❚";
                }
            }  

Note: The lines that change the html content do work, only the audio.pause() method doesn’t.

tyia