Croft is newly freed from prison after serving ten years for the murder and rape of Rebecca, though with modern evidence, the courts overturned his conviction, allowing him to return to a semi-normal life in London. Croft moves into the basement of a family home attached to a pub named The Old Tiger’s Head. Meeting Sandra and her son, Alex, Croft feels they are both welcoming and hostile. The lawyer who freed Croft, Symes, is supervising his reentry into society and encourages him to connect with the family and with Symes’ family as well, inviting him over for a dinner party. Prior to Croft’s imprisonment, he worked as a forensic photographer, and he gained wide recognition as an artist. During the prosecution, photos of Rebecca taken shortly after her murder were discovered on Croft’s camera, though he was also surprised to find them there when he developed his film; he had never taken the photos, or didn’t remember taking them. While he’s at the dinner party, Symes’ wife is strange towards Croft, being too intimate with him; in a rush, Croft flees to the bathroom. On his way out, he notices several of his photographs are presented in the hallway, including one photograph of Rebecca after her murder that was not available to the public. This brings him back to his time in prison, when a fellow inmate told him about a group of modern hell-raisers who call themselves Satan’s Tigers, who seek to bring about chaos and destruction; at that dinner party, the guests reveal that they’ve pitched in to purchase a camera for him. The Symes' continue to urge Croft to get closer to Alex, the boy, and he does: he photographs him and begins to introduce him to photography. One day when they’re together, Croft asks about an alcove in the basement that is locked, and Alex tells him it’s probably where the tiger’s head that the pub is named after is hidden; legend has it that they decapitated the tiger and then stored it’s head somewhere on the property. Once he gets the keys from Sandra, Croft peeks inside the alcove and feels overcome by the supernatural psyche of the tiger. He knows now what the Symes' plan to do with Alex: he is to be sacrificed. Taking the boy without telling Sandra, Croft embarks on a trip towards the Symes' with naive Alex in hand.