Police in Jamaica want to question a caretaker after a British tourist was found murdered.

The body of Barbara Scott-Jones, a retired nurse, was discovered in a sewage pit in the grounds of the home where she had been staying in St James in the northwest of the island. She appeared to have died from a skull fracture. It was the first time a tourist had been killed on the island this year.

Jamaican detectives said they were looking for Omar Reid, 30, who went missing at the same time as Scott-Jones nine days ago. He had worked as her caretaker and gardener. Police suspect the couple may have been having an affair.

Scott-Jones, 61, a divorcee from Leeds, had been on an extended holiday in Jamaica since January. She had a two-bedroom house there and had holidayed in Jamaica for the past 15 years. She was due to return to Britain next week. Police said she was last seen heading to the resort of Montego Bay to visit a friend.

The Foreign Office said yesterday that officials from the British High Commission had been in touch with relatives, who are in the country, to offer assistance.

Mark Shields, deputy commissioner of Jamaica’s police, said neighbours had become concerned after Scott-Jones went missing more than a week ago. Police discovered that several items appeared to have been stolen from her house.

An initial police search of the property and its grounds failed to uncover signs of a struggle and the body was discovered only on Friday morning when police realised that they had not searched a sealed sewage pit in the back garden.

Shields said suspicion had fallen on Reid because he had gone missing at the same time as Scott-Jones. “There is speculation that there was a relationship between them,” he said.

Charlie Jones, Scott-Jones’s former husband, and Salina, one of the couple’s daughters, flew to the island last week.

The family said they had become alarmed because they had been unable to contact her since Monday. “We have been calling her repeatedly since Monday and have only been successful in getting her voicemail,” Salina said, shortly before her mother’s body was discovered.

She said relatives had become further alarmed after receiving a strange text message from her mother’s phone. “It was signed M Scott and mummy would never write that. She would have written ‘mummy’ instead,” she said.

The Foreign Office warns travellers to Jamaica of the high levels of crime and violence.

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