If you kill an NPC who has an important unique quest item on them, and you forget to take the item, after their body disappears the item will be lost forever and it appears there is no way to finish the quest without using console commands.
Context of relevant quest below:
This seems like a bad oversight by the devs. A body shouldn't disappear if it has an important unique quest item on it.
Running on Windows 10 PC.
OpenMW version 0.48.0.
Latest Morrowind, Tribunal and Bloodmoon game files downloaded from Steam.
Tamriel Rebuilt, Patch for Purists, Morrowind Optimization Patch and texture packs installed.