He laughed. It was so funny, the image of the policeman, thumping about in his boots, creaking in his yellow plastic jacket, the radio squawking constantly in his ear, sending him messages, messages, more messages, telling him where to go and not to go, instructions and orders, comments and commands, barking and babbling. How did he stand it? The policeman must be deaf. Deaf in his mind. It was so funny that he laughed again. Chuckle, chortle, snigger.

But he knew immediately he’d laughed out loud. He could tell by the faces of the nightclub queue, turned towards him in a glare of light. Derisive, hostile. Someone tittered, someone jeered. Something jabbered and muttered at the back of his brain. It was time to be elsewhere.

He turned, hunching his shoulders inside his overcoat, and walked towards the Promenade Fish Bar. He was following the lure of a rumbling motorcycle engine, a two-tone horn on a car racing up the road. Further on, he could hear the sounds of an amusement arcade. Rattle, crash, boom. They wouldn’t let him in, but he could stand outside and enjoy the buzz of the traffic, too.

Night-time was the most difficult. There was too little noise. Always too little. He was sure he wasn’t alone in feeling most vulnerable at night. Darkness could hide anything, couldn’t it? It was populated with fantasies and horrors, ghosts and demons, and all the other fears that chattered like monkeys in the corners of his mind. Not to mention the burglars and rapists, the crazed axemen muttering in the alleys, drawn to the sound of human breathing like moths to a flame.

Every time he went to sleep, he knew he might wake up to a presence in the room, a voice congealed into reality. He pictured the moment when the breathing he could hear was not his own, when the shadow behind the door began to move, when an arm brushed against the wall, a whisper of fabric in the silence and a hoarse mumble of his name, before the final lunge of the knife. He imagined those last moments so often that he could feel his limbs tangle in the sheets as he thrashed to escape the blade. Slash, stab, rip. There, what did I tell you?

A hospital room was no better. The sounds that drifted down corridors during the night were strange and incomprehensible. Like bedlam, the music of the madhouse. Howl, roar, bark at the moon. And not only sounds, but smells. They could blend in the mind like a thick soup, swirling and forming pictures that he’d rather not see inside his head. There were half-spoken memories that he’d carry for ever, recollections of unseen people discussing him, their voices hushed and murmuring, commenting on his state of health, using words that were unknown to him. Planning his disposal, as if he were an animal.