Item 14: One Hardware Wallet, PIN Unknown

The inventory is thirty-eight items long and thirty-seven of them are ordinary. A flat in Salford, a car, a modest pension, some furniture the family have already argued about, a savings account, a stamp collection that's worth less than the stamps think it is. Item fourteen is a small black device in a drawer, still in its box, with a folded sticky note inside the lid that says, in blue biro: "ask Barry". I've been doing probate for twenty-two years. I know what it is. What I don't know is what's on it, and there's no way to find out without the PIN, and the device wipes itself after too many wrong guesses, and Mr Whitlow, seventy-four, careful by all accounts, did not leave the PIN anywhere in the flat. I have looked. His daughter doesn't know a Barry. His son doesn't know a Barry. His neighbour thought for a long time and said there was a Barry at the bowls club who died in 2019. The bowls club has no record of a Barry. I've had the bank statements. There's one transfer, in 2016, to an exchange I recognise, for six thousand pounds. There's nothing after that. Nothing coming back. If he bought what I think he bought in 2016 and never touched it, item fourteen is worth more than the other thirty-seven put together, and the family don't know, and I haven't told them, because I don't know either, and raising hopes is not a service I'm paid for. There's a recovery phrase somewhere. There has to be. Twenty-four words on a card that came with the box, and the card isn't in the box. I've been through his books, page by page, because people do that. I've been through the freezer, because people do that too. I found a bag of peas from 2021. The daughter rang yesterday. She wanted to know about the car. I told her about the car. Then she said, "Was there anything else? Dad kept saying there'd be something for the grandkids. We thought he meant the stamps." I said I was still going through everything. There's a photograph on his mantelpiece of a fishing trip, four men on a boat, 1990s by the haircuts. The son knows three of them. The fourth, he thinks, might be from Mr Whitlow's old work. He's going to ask around. I'm not saying it's Barry. I'm saying I've put the photograph in the file.