A man found a body Sunday evening in the Atsugi, Kanagawa Prefecture, apartment of his younger, 58-year-old brother after the landlord alerted him that his sibling had failed to pay the rent.

The man called police at about 6 p.m., said the Kanagawa Prefectural Police, noting that both the younger brother and his wife in her 70s, who presumably lived in the unit, are regarded as missing at this point.

The police said they have yet to identify the deceased or determine the gender of the corpse except to say the dead was apparently an adult.

Police started investigation on suspicion of abandonement of a body.

According to police, the body was wrapped in a sheet formed by taping together multiple translucent plastic bags. It was found lying on a sheet spread on a tatami-mat floor.

The older brother, 61, visited the apartment and opened the locked front door with a spare key he borrowed from the landlord, who had earlier notified him that the younger brother failed to transfer the rent money to a bank account. The payment was due on Dec. 16.

The younger brother’s car was also missing, the police said.

The apartment is located about 1.5 km northwest of Atsugi Station on the Odakyu Line.

“I sometimes saw the couple go out together in their car,” a housewife in her 50s who lives nearby said. “Their car was usually parked in a parking lot in front of their apartment, but I didn’t see it parked there recently.”