Mex returned to the Gambia for the second half of his mission the following February. This was right in the middle of the high season so the hotel was nearly full. However, there was one surprising bonus. One of the long term inmates was home on leave and Mex was given his room which had only one double bed instead of two, and had a coffee table and four easy chairs as well as a small fridge. This was very much better tha...

The Gambia may be the smallest republic in Africa and Mex had only two brief sojourns there but it was indelibly engraved in his memory. For two reasons; firstly, it was the first and only time he ever worked in a holiday destination and secondly, it was where he first experienced the rapacious nature of grey sex. He had been sent to the tiny West African republic by NORAID, the Norwegian International Aid Agency, quite u...

To the casual observer, Maxwell James Robertson looked much like any other expatriate in the lounge of Nairobi’s Fairway Hotel. A well proportioned man, a touch under six feet, age had treated him kindly. Middle-aged, he had a firm face with a determined “Scottish” chin and aquiline nose. Having just spent a couple of weeks in Uganda, he was pleasantly tanned, a tan that set off his immaculately groomed silver hair to per...