It Takes a Thief (audio story)

 was the first story in the audio anthology Lady Christina: Series One, produced by Big Finish Productions. It was written by John Dorney and featured Michelle Ryan as Lady Christina de Souza and Warren Brown as Sam Bishop.

Publisher's summary
The French Riviera has always provided rich pickings for the aristocratic cat-burglar. Lady Christina is enjoying the high life while adding to her collection.

But when suspicion falls on her after a robbery-turned-murder, Christina decides to catch the culprit herself...

Plot
Lady Maud Hunter, an aristocrat living in the French Riviera, is murdered one night by intruders breaking into her house to steal a tiara using extraterrestrial technology.

The next day, Ivo Fraser-Cannon, another aristocrat, arrives in the Riviera and is immediately robbed by two thieves. Lady Christina happens upon the scene in her car and invites Ivo to give chase with her. The two pursue the thieves into the hills and Christina forces the thieves to crash, allowing her to retrieve Ivo’s wallet.

On the way back to their hotel, Ivo reveals that he is in the Riviera looking for a wife and is carrying a hugely valuable engagement ring with him, a family heirloom passed down to him by his late grandmother. The jewel in the ring isn’t anything that Christina recognises and Ivo refers to it as ‘outworldly’. Upon arriving at Christina’s penthouse in the hotel, they are met by Christina’s maid Carla and Interpol agent Flavia Santos. Santos is hostile to Christina and tacitly accuses her of being responsible for the murder of Lady Maud. Christina denies all involvement but decides to investigate the matter further, taking Ivo along with her to visit the scene of the crime at Lady Maud’s villa.

The two investigate the scene and Christina determines that the intruders used alien technology to break in. She recalls several other recent thefts of valuable items and theorises that they all have one strand in common, namely that parts of them were judged to be ‘outworldly’ or extraterrestrial in origin, leading Christina to believe that Ivo’s ring might be another target.

As they leave Lady Maud’s villa however, Christina is apprehended by Santos and charged with the murder. Having searched Christina’s penthouse after their meeting, Santos and her team discovered several items found to be stolen from the villa, albeit with the tiara still missing. Christina protests that she has been set-up to Ivo and instructs him to alert Carla before then escaping Santos’ custody by diving from a nearby cliff.

Carla arrives at a local cafe to be greeted by Christina in disguise as a waitress. Carla hands Christina a phone that she had kept in her possession from her last encounter with the Doctor that allows her to contact UNIT. Christina does so and is put through to Sam Bishop so she can assert her innocence and ask for help.

Bishop reveals that a device able to identify alien items was stolen from UNIT several months prior and that former UNIT soldiers who were fired for poor professional standards are suspected of the thefts, in order to sell alien technology on the black market. Christina identifies this group as Santos and her ‘Interpol agents’ and resolves to defeat them, to Bishop’s protests.

With help from Carla, Christina distracts Santos and her team before breaking back into her hotel. Santos soon discovers Christina and confronts her. In the confrontation, Christina states that the alien item Santos is looking for remains hidden, leading Santos to threaten her with the same weapon used to kill Maud. However, Ivo sneaks in and incapacitates Santos, revealing to Christina that he is actually an Interpol agent investigating the thefts undercover. Christina tells Ivo that she already knew of his true identity and hands over Santos’ recorded confession.

Santos suddenly awakes and starts firing her weapon at Christina and Ivo, forcing them to flee to the roof where Christina had parked her flying bus. The two escape on the bus, which is the alien artefact Santos had truly been after. Santos uses hover boots to get onto the bus roof and starts firing at the two of them, leading to a physical fight with Christina whilst Ivo flies the bus.

The fight results in the bus being badly damaged and as it crashes towards the hotel, Santos is thrown away by her hover boots. Christina manages to prevent the bus from crashing whilst Ivo’s team arrests an incapacitated Santos. Christina and Ivo have a celebratory drink, whereupon Ivo reveals that his mugging was staged and that Interpol were able to recover the alien technology stolen by Santos and her team. Christina departs after the drink and Ivo receives a phone call from Bishop.

Bishop tells Ivo that the alien artefact detector was missing from the returned items and as Ivo realises that Christina stole it, he also discovers that she stole the valuable ring from him too before she left. As he sees Christina flying away in the bus however, Ivo chooses to salute her skills rather than pursue her.

Cast

 * Lady Christina - Michelle Ryan
 * Sam Bishop - Warren Brown
 * Ivo Fraser-Cannon - Matt Barber
 * Flavia Santos / Operator - Cristina Barreiro
 * Carla / Maud Hunter - Holly Jackson Walters
 * Taxi driver - Gareth Corke
 * Conceirge - Matthew Brenher

Continuity

 * Christina was sceptical about aliens until she met a very special man, with whom she had an encounter at Easter involving a tunnel, a wormhole and a flying manta ray. (TV: Planet of the Dead)
 * Christina uses Barclay's phone, which she failed to return to him when they met. She uses the last number dialed feature to contact UNIT and Angela's trick to get put through to a real person. (TV: Planet of the Dead)