Flay can be followed by his cough. Being someone who often has a dry cough, I liked this perfect description of that ineluctable irritation in the throat, as in breathing brick dust.

‘… and then the driest series of brick-dust coughs he had ever heard revealed the proximity of Flay.’

Source: Mervyn Peake, Titus Groan, introduction by Anthony Burgess (London: Vintage Books, 1998), p. 294