'We believed justice would prevail. And it did not' - Deepcut

As a new play about the deaths of four young soldiers at Deepcut Barracks heads for the Fringe, Susan Mansfield meets two parents coming to terms with their loss

THERE was a Santa hat in Cheryl James's suitcase. Her family found it after she died, along with the Christmas present she had bought for her mother. Now Doreen James thinks about the Santa hat, and the daughter who loved Christmas, loved her family, loved life. And she wonders: did she really kill herself?

Cheryl James died in November 1995, aged 18, one of four young soldiers to die from gunshot wounds over a six-year period at the Deepcut army barracks in Surrey. The army claims all four took their own lives. The soldiers' families claim their deaths were never fully investigated.

Cheryl James's story will be told at the Fringe this year in a new play developed by the Cardiff-based Sherman Cymru Theatre. Playwright and actor Philip Ralph, who was shortlisted for the Stage Award at the Fringe in 2005, has spent two years researching the story and working with the James family.

He is careful to play down any comparisons with Black Watch, the National Theatre of Scotland's documentary play about the army, which became a smash hit at the Fringe two years ago and has now toured all over the world. This play is smaller, more intimate, the story of a family's quest for answers.

When I meet Des and Doreen James, they are preparing to see the play for the first time. It will be traumatic, they say, but they are resolute. This is an important chance to keep the story of Deepcut alive, and to renew their demands for a public inquiry into the four deaths.

A quiet couple in their late fifties from Llanymynech near Welshpool, they are reluctant campaigners. "We're not anti-establishment, anti-military, there's no reason we would be," says Des, who is a human resources manager at a multinational packing company. "My wife's father is a 93-year-old Burma veteran, we're as proud of the military as anyone else.

"We're just normal people who believed that when something happened as it did, right would be done and justice would prevail. And it did not. That's been a big shock and a big disappointment."

Des is quietly professional, carefully explaining the years of letters and interviews, the fruitless meetings with ministers and officials, the layer upon layer of reports and investigations that seemed to conceal more than they revealed. He would rather talk about these, one suspects, than talk about Cheryl.

Doreen hands me a small photograph album so I can "see who we're talking about". Cheryl James smiles back at me, a bubbly teenager enjoying her 18th birthday party. Five weeks later she would be dead. "Does that look like someone who's terribly depressed?" Doreen asks.

She admits she had reservations about her daughter joining the army. She had hoped she would become a nurse, as she herself had been. Cheryl had worked at several old folks' homes and was a gifted carer. "She was headstrong, like most teenagers. I think she wanted the adventure, the chance to go abroad. In some ways I was almost pleased because I thought in the army at least she'd be safe." Her voice tails off, leaves the thought hanging.

She struggles to believe that Cheryl took her own life. "I spoke to her the day before she died, we were talking about going Christmas shopping. She said she was broke, I said I was too, but we decided we could go window shopping. Someone who's intending not to be on this earth for long doesn't go Christmas shopping."

Cheryl died on a Saturday morning, while on guard duty, from a single bullet wound to the head. There were no witnesses. An army inquiry found that she had taken her own life; a coroner returned an open verdict. The case was quickly closed. But no-one told the Jameses that Private Sean Benton had died at Deepcut from gunshot wounds five months earlier. "We were totally in grief," says Des. "We should have heard alarm bells all over the place."

The following spring, Des started writing letters to the army and the Ministry of Defence. "I didn't want someone to blame, he says. "I just wanted answers. If it had happened at home, we would have asked exactly the same questions, or at a university, and there would have been far more investigation than there was at Deepcut."

A year later, he was no further on. Replies were delayed and non-committal. "We didn't understand the enormity of it all," he says.

All that would change in 2002. After two more young recruits – Geoff Gray and Perth-born James Collinson – died, the media got hold of the story. Des and Doreen James were asked to take part in a television documentary. "We were reluctant to be involved," says Des. "I'm ashamed to say that now." Doreen adds: "It was me more than you. I couldn't face having it all raked up again. But when I realised that these other boys were involved, I couldn't stand back and let all that happen again."

The media furore prompted a hasty investigation by Surrey Police. There were reports, statements by politicians, a further investigation by another police force (Devon and Cornwall), then one by the Commons Defence Select Committee, and more reports. But nothing that explained why four young soldiers died at Deepcut.

Frank Swann, an independent ballistics expert working on behalf of the families, concluded that, on the basis of the evidence available to him, suicide was "unlikely" in any of the four cases. Of the five bullet wounds in Sean Benton's body, the majority were not fired at close range. Cheryl James, he said, "did not self-inflict the wound that killed her". The evidence is more consistent with her pushing a gun away from her face when it was fired.

Meanwhile, Des James was also finding loopholes. The rifle Cheryl was carrying was never fingerprinted, and the remaining ammunition in it was destroyed rather than being retained for forensic tests. Bullet fragments found in her body were removed at a post-mortem examination then later mysteriously lost. Devon and Cornwall Police, who were called in to report on Surrey Police's investigation, said that they believe all four deaths should have been treated initially as murder.

The Jameses are not seeking to prove a cover-up or a conspiracy. The possibility of a third party being involved in the deaths is almost more appalling to them than a verdict of suicide. They just want answers. "If someone could tell me that there were fingerprints on the rifle, that it was the gun that killed her, that the fingerprints were hers, that would give me some sort of closure," Des says.

He believes that a public inquiry, where witnesses could be subpoenaed and would be cross-examined under oath, might uncover the truth. And he wonders why the government is so reluctant to hold one.

In October 2004, amid great fanfare, the government announced the Blake Review, an independent review of the evidence into the deaths at Deepcut by barrister Nicholas Blake. His lengthy report was published in March 2006, concluding that, on the balance of probabilities, the deaths were self-inflicted. He also advised against holding a public inquiry. A line was to be drawn. Deepcut was over.

Des James remembers the day the Blake Report was published as his lowest point. "If it's possible to see a missile coming to blow your head off, that's how it was that day. That was when I knew it was over. He (Nicholas Blake] couldn't even look us in the face." Des is now pursuing the only legal channel still open to him: a second inquest into Cheryl's death.

Playwright Philip Ralph has read the Blake Review and claims it "asks more questions than it answers". He says: "The Blake Review has been extraordinarily well spun by the government. Whether it's a cover-up or whether it's spin, the end result remains the same: that the state did a phenomenal job of closing this down, and the media dropped the ball because the state played it so well. I'm not suggesting it was a cover-up, but if it looks like a duck and quacks like a duck…"

He says he hopes the play will stimulate audiences to ask questions. "It would be spectacularly egotistical to expect a play to convince the state to have a public inquiry when everything else hasn't. But I hope it gives the families a bit more press oxygen. They only have access to the media when the media is interested. My role was to hand them the puny megaphone of theatre."

Des James says he is "appalled" by the actions of politicians who have done "a shoe shuffle" around the issues. "Before this happened, I was quite proud of the impartiality of the justice system. Now I find senior police officers can tell lies and get away with it, and ministers dance around justice for political means, manipulate media, choreograph the public. I feel ashamed.

"Where would it have ended if the media hadn't got hold of it in 2002? At what point would the government have automatically given us a public inquiry – five deaths? Seven? Nine?"

People keep asking him and Doreen why they keep going. He looks weary, shakes his head. "We haven't got a choice," says Doreen. "That's the annoying thing, that the Ministry of Defence can just sweep it under the carpet and forget about it. We can't. But the longer it goes on, the colder the trail is getting. They hope we'll get tired and go away, which is impossible."

It's impossible because of the smiling girl in the photograph who should be in her thirties by now. "At the end of the day, that's the thing that pushes me, the fact that there isn't an explanation for her death, and that she can't stand up and defend herself. She always looked after the underdog, if there was any injustice or somebody not being treated well, she would fight for them." Her voice is choked with tears, and Des picks up the thread.

"If the roles were reversed, she would probably do the same thing for us. She wouldn't have been put off."

• Deep Cut is at the Traverse Theatre, 1-24 August, with a preview on 31 July

How the Deepcut tragedy unfolded

• 9 June 1995: Private Sean Benton, 20, from Hastings, is found dead. An inquest records a verdict of suicide.

&149 27 November 1995: Death of Private Cheryl James, 18, from Llangollen. The Army says she took her own life; the coroner records an open verdict.

• 17 September 2001: Death of Private Geoff Gray, 17, from Hackney. A coroner records an open verdict.

• 23 March, 2002: Death of Private James Collinson, 17, from Perth.

• April 2002: Amid media furore, Surrey Police opens an investigation into the deaths of Gray and Collinson. They later announce that they are reviewing all four deaths.

• June 2002: All four families call for a public inquiry.

• October 2002: An independent ballistics expert claims in a BBC documentary that it would have been impossible for Geoff Gray to kill himself.

• 8 July 2003: Former soldier Leslie Skinner, 45, is charged with a number of sexual offences against males, alleged to have occurred at Deepcut. He is later found guilty. Police say this is not connected to the four deaths.

• 19 September 2003: Surrey Police concludes that there are no grounds for prosecution over the Deepcut deaths.

• October 2003: Devon and Cornwall Police are asked to investigate Surrey Police's handling of the inquiry.

• October 2004: Reports are leaked to the media of widespread bullying, sexual harassment and gang rape at Deepcut. The families march on Parliament calling for a public inquiry. The government announces the Blake Review into the situation.

• March 2006: The Blake Review is published, ruling out the need for a public inquiry. An inquest into the death of Private Collinson returns an open verdict.

• January 2008: Bob Ainsworth, the armed forces minister, announces that the barracks will be sold off in 2013 and the site redeveloped.